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THE BOSTON KIDNAPPING 



DISCOURSE 



TO COMMEMORATK 



THE RENDITION OF THOMAS SIMMS, 

DELIVERED ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY THEREOF, 
APRIL 12, 1852, 

BEFORE THE COMMITTEE OF VIGILANCE, 

AT THE MELODEON IN BOSTON. 

BY THEODORE PARKER. 



*> BOSTON: 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, & COMPANY, 
111, Washington Street. 
1852. 



J 



THE BOSTON KIDNAPPING: 



DISCOURSE 



TO COMMEMORATE 



THE RENDITION OF THOMAS SIMMS, 

DELIVERED ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY THEREOF, 
APRIL 12, 1852, 

BEFORE THE COMMITTEE OF VIGILANCE, 

AT THE MELODEON IN BOSTON. 



BY THEODORE PARKER. 






f 1 ' 




S BOSTON: 

CROSBY, NICHOLS, & COMPANY, 

111, Washington Street. 

1852. 



E 



Rev. Theodore Parker. 

Dear Sir, — We know that we express the earnest and unanimous wish 
of all who listened to your appropriate and eloquent address last Monday, 
in asking a copy of it for the press. 

Yours respectfully, 



Wendell Phillips, 
Henry I. Bowditch, 
Timothy Gilbert, 
John P. Jewett, 
M. P. Hanson, 
John M. Spear, 



Committee 

of 

Arrangements. 



Boston, April 16, 1852. 



boston: 

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
22, School Street. 



<~7 



DISCOURSE 



There are times of private, personal joy and delight, when 
some good deed has been done, or some extraordinary 
blessing welcomed to the arms. Then the man stops, and 
pours out the expression of his heightened consciousness ; 
gives gladness words ; or else, in manly quietness, exhales 
to heaven his joy, too deep for speech. Thus the lover 
rejoices in his young heart of hearts, when another breast 
beats in conscious unison with his own, and two souls are 
first made one ; so a father rejoices, so a mother is filled 
with delight, her hour of anguish over, when the gladdened 
eyes behold the new-born daughter or the new-born son. 
Henceforth the day of newly welcomed love, the day of newly 
welcomed life, is an epoch of delight, marked for thanks- 
giving with a white stone in their calends of time, — 
their day of Annunciation or of Advent, a gladsome anni- 
versary in their lives for many a year. 

When these married mates are grown maturely wed, 
they rejoice to live over again their early loves, a second 
time removing the hindrances which once strewed all the 
way, dreaming anew the sweet prophetic dream of early 
hope, and bringing back the crimson mornings and the 
purple nights of golden days gone by, that still keep 
" trailing clouds of glory " as they pass. At their silver 



wedding, they are proud to see their children's manlyfying 
face, and remember how, one by one, these olive plants 
came up about their widening hearth. 

When old and full of memories of earth, their hopes 
chiefly of heaven now, they love to keep the golden 
wedding of their youthful joy, children and children's chil- 
dren round their venerable board. 

Thus the individual man seeks to commemorate his 
private personal joy, and build up a monument of his 
domestic bliss. 

So, in the life of a nation, there are proud days, when the 
people joined itself to some great Idea of Justice, Truth, and 
Love ; took some step forward in its destiny, or welcomed 
to national baptism some institution born of its great idea. 
The anniversaries of such events become red-letter days in 
the almanac of the nation ; days of rejoicing, till that 
people, old and gray with manifold experience, goes the 
way of all the nations, as of all its men. Thus, on the 
twenty-second of December, all New England thanks God 
for those poor Pilgrims whose wearied feet first found 
repose in this great wilderness of woods, not broken then. 
Each year, their children love to gather on the spot made 
famous now, and bring to mind the ancient deed ; to honor 
it with speech and song, not without prayers to God. 
That day there is a springing of New England blood, a 
beating of New England hearts ; not only here, but where- 
ever two or three are gathered together in the name of New 
England, there is the memory of the Pilgrims in the midst 
of them ; and among the prairies of the West, along the 
rivers of the South, far off where the Pacific waits to bring 
gold to our shores of rock and sand, — even there the 
annual song of gladness bursts from New England lips. 

So America honors the birth of the nation with a holi- 
day for all the people. Then we look anew at the national 
idea, reading for the six and seventieth time the programme 



of our progress, — its first part a revolution ; we study our 
history before and since, bringing back the day of small 
things, when our fathers went from one kingdom to an- 
other people ; we rejoice at the wealthy harvest gathered 
from the unalienable rights of men, sown in new soil. On 
that day the American flag goes topmast high ; and men 
in ships, far off in the silent wilderness of the ocean, cele- 
brate the nation's joyous day. In all the great cities of the 
Eastern World, American hearts beat quicker then, and 
thank their God. 

But a few days ago, the Hebrew nation commemorated 
its escape out of Egypt, celebrating its Passover. Though 
three and thirty hundred years have since passed by, yet 
the Israelite remembers that his fathers were slaves in the 
land of the stranger ; that the Pyramids, even then a fact 
accomplished and representing an obsolete idea, were wit- 
nesses to the thraldom of his race; and the joy of Jacob 
triumphant over the gods of Egypt lights up the Hebrew 
countenance in the melancholy Ghetto of Rome, as the 
recollection of the hundred and one Pilgrims deepens 
the joy of the Californian New Englanders delighting 
in the glory of their nation, and their own abundant gain. 
The pillar of fire still goes before the Hebrew, in the long 
night of Israel's wandering ; and still the Passover is a day 
of joy and of proud remembrance. 

Every ancient nation has thus its calendar filled with 
joyful days. The worshippers of Jesus delight in their 
Christmas and their Easter ; the Mahometans, in the He- 
gira of the Prophet. The year-book of mankind is thus 
marked all the way through with the red-letter days of 
history ; and most beautiful do those days illuminate the 
human year, commemorating the victories of the race, 
the days of triumph which have marked the course of man 
in his long and varied, but yet triumphant, march of many 
a thousand years. Thereby Hebrews, Budhists, Christians, 



Mahometans, men of every form of religion ; English, French, 
Americans, men of all nations, — are reminded of the great 
facts in their peculiar story ; and mankind learns the lesson 
they were meant to teach, writ in the great events of the 
cosmic life of man. 

These things should, indeed, be so. It were wrong to 
miss a single bright day from the story of a man, a nation, 
or mankind. Let us mark those days, and be glad. 

But there are periods of sorrow, not less than joy. There 
comes a shipwreck to the man ; and though he tread the 
waters under him, and come alive to land, yet his memory 
drips with sorrow for many a year to come. The widow 
marks her time by dating from the day which shore off the 
better portions of herself, counting her life by years of 
widowhood. Marius, exiled, hunted after, denied fire and 
water, a price set on his head, just escaping the murderers 
and the sea, " sitting a fugitive on the ruins of Carthage " 
which he once destroyed, himself a sadder ruin now, folds 
his arms and bows his head in manly grief. 

These days also are remembered. It takes long to efface 
what is written in tears. For ever the father bears the 
annual wound that rent his child away : fifty years do not 
fill up the tomb which let a mortal through the earth to 
heaven. The anniversaries of grief return. At St. Helena, 
on the eighteenth of every June, how Napoleon remembered 
the morning and the evening of the day at Waterloo, the 
beginning and the ending of his great despair ! 

So the nations mourn at some great defeat, and hate the 
day thereof. How the Frenchman detests the very name 
of Waterloo, and wishes to wipe off from that battlefield 
the monument of earth the Allies piled thereon, commemo- 
rative of his nation's loss! Old mythologies are true to 
this feeling of mankind, when they relate that the spirit of 



some great man who died defeated comes, and complains 
that he is sad : they tell that — 

" Great Pompey's shade complains that we are slow, 
And Scipio's ghost walks unrevenged amongst us." 

An antique nation, with deep faith in God, looks on 
these defeats as correction from the hand of Heaven. In 
sorrow the Jew counts from the day of his Exile, mourning 
that the city sits solitary that was full of people ; that among 
all her lovers she hath none to comfort her ; that she dwell- 
eth among the heathen and hath no rest. But, he adds, 
the Lord afflicted her, because of the multitude of her 
transgressions ; for Jerusalem had greatly sinned. Now, in 
the day of her miseries, the Jew remembers her pleasant 
things that she had in the days of old ; now her children 
have swooned from their wounds in the streets of their city, 
and have poured out their soul into their mother's bosom ; 
Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen, because their 
tongue and their doings were against the Lord, to provoke 
the eyes of his glory. 

It is well that mother and Marius should mourn their loss ; 
that Napoleon and the Hebrew should remember each his 
own defeat. Poets say, that, on the vigil of a fight, the old 
soldier's wounds smart afresh, bleeding anew. The poet's 
fancy should be a nation's fact. 

But sometimes a man commits a wrong. He is false to 
himself, and stains the integrity of his soul. He comes to 
consciousness thereof, and the shame of the consequence is 
embittered by remorse for the cause. Thus Peter weeps 
at his own denial, and Judas hangs himself at the recollec- 
tion of his treachery ; so David bows his penitent forehead, 
and lies prostrate in the dust. The anniversary of doing 
wrong is writ with fire on the dark tablets of memory. 
How a murderer convicted, yet spared in jail, — or, not con- 
victed, still at large, — must remember the day when he 



8 



first reddened his hand at his brother's heart ! As the 
remorseless year brings back the day, the hour, the moment 
and the memory of the deed, what recollections of ghastly 
visages come back to him ! 

I once knew a New England man who had dealt in 
slaves ; I now know several such ; but this man stole his 
brothers in Guinea to sell in America. He was a hard, 
cruel man, and had grown rich by the crime. But, hard and 
cruel as he was, at the mention of the slave-trade, the 
poor wretch felt a torture at his iron heart which it was 
piteous to behold. His soul wrought within him like the 
tossings of the tropic sea about his ship, deep fraught 
with human wretchedness. He illustrated the torments of 
that other " middle passage," not often named. 

Benedict Arnold, successful in his treason, safe, — only 
Andre hanged, not he, the guilty man, — pensioned, feasted, 
rich, yet hated by all ingenuous souls, not great enough to 
pity, hateful to himself; how this first great public shame 
of New England must have remembered the twenty-fifth 
September, and have lived over again each year the annual 
treason of his heart ! 

It is well for men to pause on such days, the anniversary 
of their crime, and see the letters which sin has branded in 
their consciousness come out anew, and burn, even in the 
scars they left behind. In sadness, in penitence, in prayers 
of resolution, should a man mark these days in his own 
sad calendar. They are times for a man to retire within 
himself, to seek communion with his God, and cleanse him 
of the elephantine leprosy his sin has brought upon his 
soul. 

There are such days in the life of a nation, when it stains 
its own integrity, commits treason against mankind, and 
sin against the most high God ; when a proud king, or wicked 
minister, — his rare power consorting with a vulgar aim, 
— misled the people's heart, abused the nation's strength, 



organized iniquity as law, condensing a world of wicked 
will into a single wicked deed, and wrought some hideous 
Bartholomew massacre in the face of the sun. The anni- 
versary of such events is a day of horror and of shivering to 
mankind ; a day of sorrow to the guilty State which pricks 
with shame at the annniversary of the deed. 

The twelfth of April is such a day for Boston and this 
State. It is the first anniversary of a great crime, — a 
crime against the majesty of Massachusetts law, and the 
dignity of the Constitution of the United States ; of a great 
wrong, — a wrong against you and me, and all of us, 
against the babe not born, against the nature of mankind ; 
of a great sin, — a sin against the law God wrote in 
human nature, a sin against the infinite God. It was a 
great crime, a great wrong, a great sin, on the side of the 
American government, which did the deed : on the people's 
part it was a great defeat ; your defeat and mine. 

Out of the iron house of bondage, a man, guilty of no 
crime but love of liberty, fled to the people of Massachu- 
setts. He came to us a wanderer, and Boston took him in 
to an unlawful jail; hungry, and she fed him with a felon's 
meat ; thirsty, she gave him the gall and vinegar of a slave 
to drink ; naked, and she clothed him with chains ; sick 
and in prison, he cried for a helper, and Boston sent him a 
marshal and a commissioner ; she set him between kidnap- 
pers, among the most infamous of men, and they made 
him their slave. Poor and in chains, the government of 
the nation against him, he sent round to the churches 
his petition for their prayers ; — the churches of commerce, 
they gave him their curse : he asked of us the sacrament 
of freedom, in the name of our God ; and in the name of 
their Trinity, the Trinity of money, — Boston standing as 
godmother at the ceremony, — in the name of their God they 
baptized him a Slave. Said the New England church of 
2 



10 



commerce, " Thy name is Slave. I baptize thee in the 
name of the gold eagle, and of the silver dollar, and of 
the copper cent." 

This is holy ground that we stand on : godly men laid 
here the foundation of a Christian church; laid it with 
prayers, laid it with tears, laid it in blood. Noble men laid 
here the foundation of a Christian State, with all the self- 
denial of New England men ; laid that with prayers, with 
tears, laid that in blood. They sought a church without a 
bishop, a state without a king, a community without a lord, 
and a family without a slave. Yet even here in Mas- 
sachusetts, which first of American colonies sent forth the 
idea of " inherent and unalienable rights, " and first offered 
the conscious sacrament of her blood ; here, in Boston, which 
once was full of manly men that rocked the Cradle of 
Liberty, — even here the rights of man were of no value 
and of no avail. Massachusetts took a man from the horns 
of her altar, — he had fled to her for protection, — and volun- 
tarily gave him up to bondage without end ; did it with 
her eyes wide open ; did it on purpose ; did it in notorious 
violation of her own law, in consciousness of the sin ; did 
it after " fasting and prayer." 

It is well for us to come together, and consider the defeat 
which you and I have suffered when the rights of man were 
thus cloven down, and look at the crime committed by those 
whom posterity will rank among infidels to Christianity, 
among the enemies of man ; it is well to commemorate the 
event, the disgrace of Boston, the perpetual shame and blot 
of Massachusetts. Yet it was not the people of Massa- 
chusetts who did the deed : it was only their government. 
The officers are one thing ; and the people, thank God, are 
something a little different. 

If a deed which so outraged the people had been done by 
the government of Massachusetts a hundred years ago, there 



11 



would have been a " Day of Fasting and Prayer, " and 
next a muster of soldiers : one day the people would have 
thought of their trust in God, and the next looked to it 
that their powder was dry. Now nobody fasts, save to the 
eye ; he prays best who, not asking God to do man's 
work, prays penitence, prays resolutions, and then prays 
deeds, thus supplicating with heart and head and hands. 
This is a day for such a prayer. The twelfth of last April 
issued the proclamation which brings us here to-day. 

We have historical precedent for this commemoration, if 
men need such an argument. After the Boston Massacre 
of the fifth of March, 1770, the people had annually a 
solemn commemoration of the event. They had then- 
great and honored men to the pulpit on that occasion: 
Lovell, child of a tory father, — the son's patriotism brought 
him to a British jail ; Tudor and Dawes, honorable and 
honored names; Thacher, "the young Elijah" of his 
times ; Warren, twice called to that post, but destined soon 
to perish by a British hand; John Hancock, — his very 
name was once the pride and glory of the town. They 
stood here, and, mindful of their brothers slain in the street 
not long to bear the name of " King, " taught the lesson of 
liberty to their fellow-men. The menace of British officers, 
their presence in the aisles of the church, the sight of their 
weapons on the pulpit-stairs, did not frighten Joseph War- 
ren, — not a hireling shepherd, though he came in by the pul- 
pit-window, while soldiers crammed the porch. Did they 
threaten to stop his mouth? It took bullet and bayonet 
both to silence his lips. John Hancock was of eyes too 
pure to fear the government of Britain. Once, when 
Boston was in the hands of the enemy of freedom, — I 
mean the foreign enemy, — the discourse could not be 
delivered here; Boston adjourned to Watertown to hear 
"the young Elijah" ask whether "the rising empire 'of 
America shall be an empire of slaves or of free men." 



12 

But on that day there was another commemoration held 
hard by; one George Washington discoursed from the 
" heights of Dorchester ; " and, soon after, Israel Putnam 
marched over the Neck, — and there was not a " Red-coat " 
south of the North End. The March of '76 was not far 
from the July of '76, when yet another discourse got spoken. 

For twelve years did our fathers commemorate the first 
blood shed here by soldiers " quartered among us without our 
consent ; " yes, until there was not a « Red-coat " left in the 
land ; and the gloom of the Boston Massacre was forgot 
in the blaze of American independence ; the murder of five 
men, in the freedom of two millions. 

The first slave Boston has officially sent back since 1770 
was returned a year ago. Let us commemorate the act, 
till there is not a kidnapper left in all the North ; not a 
kidnapper lurking in a lawyer's office in all Boston, or in a 
merchant's counting-room ; not a priest who profanes his 
function by flouting at the Higher Law of God ; till there 
is not a slave in America ; and sorrow at the rendition of 
Thomas Simms shall be forgotten in the freedom of three 
million men. Let us remember the Boston Kidnapping, 
as our fathers kept the memory of the Boston Massacre. 

It is a fitting time to come together. There was once a 
" dark day " in New England, when the visible heavens 
were hung with night, and men's faces gathered blackness, 
less from the sky above than from the fears within. But 
New England never saw a day so black as the twelfth of 
April, 1851 ; a day whose Egyptian darkness will be felt 
for many a year to come. 

New England has had days of misfortune before this, 
and of mourning at the sin of her magistrates. In 1761, 
a mean man in a high place in the British Island, thinking 
that " discussion must be suppressed, " declared that citi- 
zens " are not to demand the reasons of measures ; they 



13 



must, and they easily may, be taught better manners." 
The British ministry decided to tax the colonies without 
their consent. Massachusetts decided to be taxed only with 
her own consent. The Board of Trade determined to 
collect duties against the will of the people. The Govern- 
ment insisted ; the mercenaries of the Custom House in 
Boston applied for " Writs of Assistance, " authorizing 
them to search for smuggled goods where and when they 
pleased, and to call on the people to help in the matter. 
The mercenary who filled the Governor's chair favored the 
outrage. The Court, obedient to power, and usually on 
the side of prerogative and against the right, seemed 
ready to pervert the law against justice. Massachusetts 
felt her liberties in peril, and began the war of ideas. 
James Otis, an irregular but brilliant and powerful man, 
from Barnstable, and an acute lawyer, resigned his post of 
Advocate to the Admiralty ; threw up his chance of prefer- 
ment, and was determined " to sacrifice estate, ease, health, 
applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of my country, " 
and in opposition to that kind of power " which cost one 
King of England his head, and another his throne." 

It was a dark day in Massachusetts when the Writs of 
Assistance were called for; when the talents, the fame, 
the riches, and the avarice of Chief Justice Hutchinson, 
the respectability of venerable men, the power of the crown 
and its officers, were all against the right ; but that brave 
lawyer stood up, his words " a flame of fire, " to demonstrate 
" that all arbitrary authority was unconstitutional and 
against the law." His voice rung through the land like a 
war-psalm of the Hebrew muse. Hutchinson, rich, false, 
and in power, cowered before the " great incendiary " of 
New England. John Adams, a young lawyer from Quincy, 
who stood by, touched by the same inspiration, declared 
that afterwards he could never read the Acts of Trade 
without anger, nor " any portion of them without a curse." 



14 



If the Court was not convinced, the people were. It was 
a dark day when the Writs of Assistance were called for ; 
but the birthplace of Franklin took the lightning out of 
that thundering cloud, and the storm broke into rain which 
brought forth the green glories of Liberty-tree, that soon 
blossomed all over in the radiance of the bow of promise set 
on the departing cloud. The seed from that day of bloom 
shall sow with blessings all the whole wide world of man. 

There was another dark time when the Stamp Act 
passed, and the day came for the use of the Stamps, Nov. 
1st, 1765. The people of Boston closed their shops ; they 
muffled and tolled the bells of the churches ; they hung on 
Liberty-tree the effigy of Mr. Huske, a New Hampshire 
traitor of that time, who had removed to London, got a 
seat in Parliament, and was said to have proposed the 
Stamp Act to the British minister. Beside him they 
hung the image of Grenville, the ministerial author of the 
Act. It was All Saints' Day : two hundred and forty-eight 
years before, Martin Luther had pilloried the Papacy on a 
church-door at Wittenberg, not knowing what would fall at 
the sound of his hammer nailing up the ninety-five Theses. 
In the afternoon, the public cut down the images ; earned 
them in a cart, thousands following to the Town House, 
where the Governor and Council were in session ; carried 
the effigies solemnly through the building, and thence to the 
gallows, where, after hanging a while, they were cut down 
and torn to pieces. All was done quietly, orderly, and with 
no violence. 

Nobody would touch the hated stamps. Mr. Oliver, the 
Secretary of the Province, and " distributor of stamps, " 
had been hanged in effigy before. His stamp-office had 
already given a name to the sea, " Oliver's Dock " long 
commemorating the fate of the building. Dismayed by 
the voice of the people, he resigned his office. Not satisfied 



15 



wath that, the people had him before an immense meeting 
at Liberty-tree ; and at noon-day, under the very limb where 
he had been hung in effigy, before a Justice of the Peace 
he took an oath that he never would take any measures 
.... for enforcing the Stamp Act in America. Then, with 
three cheers for liberty, Mr. Oliver was allowed to return 
home. He ranked as the third crown-officer in the Colony. 
Where could you find " one of his Majesty's Justices 
of the Peace " to administer such an oath before such a 
" town-meeting " ? A man was found to do that deed, and 
leave descendants to be proud of it ; for, after three genera- 
tions have passed by, the name of Richard Dana is still on 
the side of liberty. 

No more of stamps in Boston at that time. In time of 
danger, it is thought " a good thing to have a man in the 
house." Boston had provided herself. There were a good 
many who did not disgrace the name. Amongst others, 
there was one of such " obstinacy and inflexible disposi- 
tion, " said Hutchinson, " that he could never be conciliated 
by any office or gift whatever." Yet Samuel Adams was 
" not rich, nor a bachelor." There was another, one John 
Adams, son of a shoemaker at Quincy, not a whit less 
obstinate or hard to conciliate with gifts. When he heard 
Otis in that great argument, he felt " ready to fake up arms 
against the Writs of Assistance." One day, the twenty- 
second of December of that year, he writes in his journal : 
" At home with my family, thinking." In due time, some- 
thing came of his thinking. He wrote, " By inactivity we 
discover cowardice, and too much respect for the Act." 

The Stamp Act was dead in New England and in all Ame- 
rica. Very soon the Ministry were glad to bury their dead. 

It was in such a spirit that Boston met the Writs of 
Assistance and the Stamp Act. What came of the resist- 
ance ? When Parliament came together, the " great com- 



16 



moner " said, — every boy knew the passage by heart when 
I went to school, — "I rejoice that America has resisted. 
Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of lib- 
erty as voluntarily to be slaves, would have been fit instru- 
ments to make slaves of all the rest." The Ministry still 
proposed to put down America by armies. Said Mr. Pitt : 
" America, if she fell, would fall like the strong man. She 
would embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the 
Constitution along with her. But she would not fall." " I 
would advise," said he, " that the Stamp Act be repealed, 
absolutely, totally, and immediately ; " " that the reason for 
the repeal be assigned ; that it was founded on an errone- 
ous principle." Repealed it was, " absolutely, totally, and 
immediately." 

But the British Ministry still insisted on taxation without 
representation. Massachusetts continued her opposition. 
There was a Merchants' Meeting in Boston in favor of 
freedom. It assembled from time to time, and had a large 
influence. Men agreed not to import British goods : they 
would wear their old clothes till they could weave new ones 
in America, and kill no more lambs till they had abund- 
ance of wool. Boston made a non-importation agreement. 
Massachusetts wrote a " circular letter " to the other colonies, 
asking them to make common cause with her, — a circular 
which the king thought " of the most dangerous and factious 
character." On the seventeenth of June, 1768, the town of 
Boston instructed its four representatives, Otis, Cushing, 
Adams, and Hancock : " It is our unalterable resolution at 
all times to assert and vindicate our dear and invaluable 
rights, at the utmost hazard of our lives and fortunes." 
This seemed to promise another seventeenth of June, if 
the Ministry persisted in their course. 

On the fifteenth of May, 1770, she again issued similar in- 
structions. " James I." says the letter of instruction, " more 
than once laid it down, that, as it was atheism and bias- 



17 

phemy in a creature to dispute what the Deity may do, so it 
is presumptuous and sedition in a subject to dispute what 
a king may do in the height of his powers." " Good Chris- 
tians," said he, " will be content with God's will revealed 
in his word, and good subjects will rest in the king's will 
revealed in his law. That was the « No Higher Law Doc- 
trine " of the time. See how it went down at Boston in 
1770. " Surely," said the people of Boston, in town-meeting 
assembled, " nothing except the ineffable contempt of the 
reigning monarch diverted that indignant vengeance which 
would otherwise have made his illustrious throne to trem- 
ble, and hurled the royal diadem from his forfeit head." 
Such was the feeling of Boston towards a government 
which flouted at the eternal law of God. 

The people claimed that law was on their side ; even Sir 
Henry Finch having said, in the time of Charles I., " The 
king's prerogative stretcheth not to the doing of any wrong." 
But, said Boston, " Had the express letter of the law been 
less favorable, and were it possible to ransack up any ab- 
surd, obsolete notions which might have seemed calculated 
to propagate slavish doctrines, we should by no means 
have been influenced to forego our birthright;" for "man- 
kind will not be reasoned out of their feelings of humanity." 
" We remind you, that the further nations recede and give 
way to the gigantic strides of any powerful despot, the more 
rapidly will the fiend advance to spread wide desolation." 
" It is now no time to halt between two opinions." " We 
enjoin you at all hazards to deport . . . like the faithful repre- 
sentatives of a free-born, awakened, and determined people, 
who, being impregnated with the spirit of liberty in concep- 
tion, and nurtured in the principles of freedom from their 
infancy, are resolved to breathe the same celestial ether, till 
summoned to resign the heavenly flame by that omnipotent 
God who gave it." That was the language of Boston in 

1770. 

3 



18 



True there were men who took the other side ; some of 
them from high and honorable convictions ; others from 
sordid motives ; some from native bigotry and meanness 
they could not help. But the mass of the people went for 
the rights of the people. It was not a mere matter of 
dollars and cents that stirred the men of Massachusetts 
then. True the people had always been thrifty, and looked 
well to the " things of this world." But threepence duty 
on a pound of tea, six farthings on a gallon of molasses, 
was not very burthensome to a people that had a school 
before there was any four-footed beast above a swine in the 
colony, — a people that once taxed themselves thirteen shil- 
lings and eightpence in a pound of income I It was the 
principle they looked at. They would not have paid three 
barleycorns on a hogshead of sugar, and admit the right of 
Parliament to levy the tax. This same spirit extended to 
the other colonies : Virginia and Massachusetts stood side 
by side ; New York with Boston. 

It was a dark day for New England when the Stamp 
Act became a law ; but it was a much darker day when 
the Fugitive Slave Bill passed the Congress of the United 
States. The Acts of Trade and the Stamp Act were the 
work of foreign hands, of the ministers of England, not 
America. A traitor of New Hampshire was thought to 
have originated the Stamp Act ; but even he did not make 
a speech in its favor. The author of the Act was never 
within three thousand miles of Boston. But the Fugitive 
Slave Bill was the work of Americans ; it had its great 
support from another native of New Hampshire ; it got the 
vote of the member for Boston, who faithfully represented 
the money which sent him there ; though, God be thanked, 
not the men ! 

When the Stamp Act came to be executed in Boston, the 
ships hung their flags at half-mast ; the shops were shut, 



19 

the bells were tolled ; ship, shop, and church all joining in a 
solidarity of affliction, in one unanimous lament. But, when 
the Fugitive Slave Bill came to Boston, the merchants and 
politicians of the city fired a hundred guns at noon-day, 
in token of their joy! How times have changed! In 1765, 
when Huske of New Hampshire favored the Stamp Act, 
and Oliver of Boston accepted the office of distributor of 
stamps, the people hung their busts in effigy on Liberty- 
tree ; Oliver must ignominiously forswear his office. After 
two of the Massachusetts delegation in Congress had voted 
for the Missouri Compromise in 1819, when they came 
back to Boston, they were hissed at on 'Change, and were 
both of them abhorred for the deed which spread slavery 
west of the great river. To this hour their names are hate- 
ful all the way from Boston to Lanesboro'. But their chil- 
dren are guiltless : let us not repeat the fathers' name. But 
what was the Stamp Act or the Missouri Compromise to 
the Fugitive Slave Bill ? One was looking at a hedge, the 
other stealing the sheep behind it. Yet when the representa- 
tive of the money of Boston, who voted for the bill, returned, 
he was nattered and thanked by two classes of men ; — 
by those whom money makes "respectable" and prominent; 
by those whom love of money makes servile and contempt- 
ible. "When he resigned his place, Boston sent another, 
with the command, " Go thou and do likewise ; " and he 
has just voted again for the Fugitive Slave Bill, — he alone 
of all the delegation of Massachusetts. 

The Stamp Act levied a tax on us in money, and Boston 
would not pay a cent, hauled down the flags, shut up the 
shops, tolled the church-bells, hung its authors in effigy, 
made the third officer of the crown take oath not to keep 
the law, cast his stamp-shop into the sea. The Slave Act 
levied a tax in men, and Boston fired a hundred guns, 
and said, " We are ready ; we will catch fugitives for the 
South. It is a dirty work, too dirty for any but Northern 



20 



hands; but it will bring us clean money." Ship, shop, 
and church seemed to feel a solidarity of interest in the 
measure ; the leading newspapers of the town were full of 
glee. 

The Fugitive Slave Bill became a law on the eighteenth 
of September, 1850. Eighty-five years before that date, there 
was a town-meeting in Boston, at which the people in- 
structed their representatives in the General Assembly of 
Massachusetts. It was just after the passage of the Stamp 
Act. Boston told her servants "by no means to join in 
any measures for countenancing and assisting in the execu- 
tion of the same [the Stamp Act] ; but to use your best 
endeavors in the General Assembly to have 1he inherent 
and unalienable rights of the people of this Province as- 
serted, vindicated, and left upon the public record, that 
posterity may never have reason to charge the present 
times with the guilt of tamely giving them away." 

It was "voted unanimously that the same be accepted." 
This is the earliest use of the phrase " inherent and unalien- 
able rights of the people " which I have yet found. It has 
the savor of James Otis, who had " a tongue of flame and 
the inspiration of a seer." It dates from Boston, and the 
eighteenth day of September, eighty-five years before the 
passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill. In 1850 where was 
the town-meeting of '65 ? James Otis died without a son ; 
but a different man sought to "fence in" the Slave Act, 
and fence men from their rights. 

The passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill was a sad event to 
the colored citizens of the State. At that time there were 
8,975 persons of color in Massachusetts. In thirty-six hours 
after the passage of the bill was known here, five and thirty 
colored persons applied to a well-known philanthropist in 
this city for counsel. Before sLxty hours passed by, more 
than forty had fled. The laws of Massachusetts could not 



21 



be trusted to shelter her own children : they must flee to 
Canada. " This arm, hostile to tyrants," says the motto of 
the State, "seeks rest in the enjoyment of liberty." Then 
it ought to have been changed, and read, " This arm, once 
hostile to tyrants, confederate with them now, drives off her 
citizens to foreign climes of liberty." 

The word "commissioner" has had a traditional hatred 
ever since our visitation by Sir Edmund Andros ; it lost 
none of its odious character when it became again incarnate 
in a kidnapper. With Slave Act commissioners to execute 
the bill, with such " ruling " as we have known on the Slave 
Act bench, such swearing by " witnesses" on the slave stand, 
any man's freedom is at the mercy of the kidnapper and his 
" commissioned " attorney. The one can manufacture " evi- 
dence" or "enlarge" it, the other manufacture " law ; " and, 
with such an administration and such creatures to serve its 
wish, what colored man was safe ? Men in peril have a 
keen instinct of their danger ; the dark-browed mothers in 
Boston, they wept like Rachel for her first-born, refusing to 
be comforted. There was no comfort for them save in 
flight : that must be not in the winter, but into the winter 
of Canada, which is to the African what our rude climate 
is to the goldfinch and to the canary-bird. 

Some of the colored people had acquired a little pro- 
perty ; they got an honest living ; had wives and children, 
and looked back upon the horrors of slavery, which it takes 
a woman's affectionate genius to paint, as you read her 
book ; looked on them as things for the memory, for the 
imagination, not as things to be suffered again. But the 
Fugitive Slave Bill said to every black mother, " This may 
be your fate ; the fate of your sons and your daughters." 
It was possible to all ; probable to many ; certain to some, 
unless they should flee. 

It was a dark bill for them; but the blackness of the 
darkness fell on the white men. The colored men were 



22 



only to bear the cross ; the whites made it. I would take 
the black man's share in suffering the Slave Act, rather 
than the white man's sin in making it ; ay, as I would 
rather take Hancock's than Huske's share of the history 
of the Stamp Act. This wicked law has developed in the 
Africans some of the most heroic virtues ; in the Yankee 
it has brought out some of the most disgraceful examples 
of meanness that ever dishonored mankind. 

The Boston Massacre, — you know what that was, and 
how the people felt when a hireling soldiery, sent here to 
oppress, shot down the citizens of Boston on the fifth of 
March, 1770. Then the blood of America flowed for the 
first time at the touch of British steel. But that deed was 
done by foreigners ; thank God, they were not Americans 
born ; done by hirelings, impressed into the army against 
their will, and sent here without their consent. It was 
done in hot blood ; done partly in self-defence, after much 
insult and wrong. The men who fired the shot were 
brought to trial. The great soul of John Adams stood up 
to defend them, Josiah Quincy aiding the unpopular 
work. A Massachusetts jury set the soldiers free, — they 
only obeyed orders, the soldier is a tool of his commander. 
Such was the Boston Massacre. Yet hear how John 
Hancock spoke on the fourth anniversary thereof, when 
passion had had time to pass away : — 

" Tell me, ye bloody butchers ! ye villains high and low ! 
ve wretches who contrived, as well as you who executed, 
the inhuman deed ! do you not feel the goads and stings 
of conscious guilt pierce through your savage bosoms ? 
Though some of you may think yourselves exalted to a 
height that bids defiance to the arms of human justice, and 
others shroud yourselves beneath the mask of hypocrisy, 
and build your hopes of safety on the low arts of cunning, 
chicanery, and falsehood ; yet do you not sometimes feel 



23 



the gnawings of that worm which never dies ? Do not the 
injured shades of Maverick, Gray, Caldwell, Attucks,and 
Carr attend you in your solitary walks, arrest you even in 
'the midst of your debaucheries, and fill even your dreams 
with terror ? 

" Ye dark, designing knaves ! ye murderers ! parricides ! 
how dare you tread upon the earth which has drank in the 
blood of slaughtered innocents, shed by your wicked hands ? 
How dare you breathe that air which wafted to the ear of 
Heaven the groans of those who fell a sacrifice to your 
accursed ambition? But if the laboring earth doth not 
expand her jaws ; if the air you breathe is not commis- 
sioned to be the minister of death ; yet hear it, and tremble ! 
the eye of Heaven penetrates the darkest chambers of the 
soul; traces the leading clue through all the labyrinths 
which your industrious folly has devised ; and you, however 
you may have screened yourselves from human eyes, must 
be arraigned, must lift your hands, red with the blood of 
those whose death you have procured, at the tremendous 
bar of God." 

But the Boston kidnapping was done by Boston men. 
The worst of the kidnappers were natives of the spot. It 
was done by volunteers, not impressed to the work, but 
choosing their profession, — loving the wages of sin, — and 
conscious of the loathing and the scorn they all are sure 
to get, and bequeath to their issue. They did it delibe- 
rately ; it was a cold-blooded atrocity : they did it aggres- 
sively, not in self-defence, but in self-degradation. They 
did it for their pay : let them have it ; verily, they shall 
have their reward. 



When the Fugitive Slave Bill became a law, it seems to 
me the Governor ought to have assembled the Legislature ; 
that they should have taken adequate measures for protect- 



24 



ing the eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-five 
persons thus left at the mercy of any kidnapper ; that 
officers should have been appointed, at the public cost, to 
defend these helpless men, and a law passed, punishing 
any one who should attempt to kidnap a man in this 
Commonwealth. Massachusetts should have done for 
justice what South Carolina has long ago done for in- 
justice. But Massachusetts had often seen her citizens put 
into the jails of the North, for no crime but their com- 
plexion, and looked on with a drowsy yawn. Once, 
indeed, she did send two persons, one to Charleston and 
the other to New Orleans, to attend to this matter : both 
of them were turned out of the South with insult and 
contempt. After that, Massachusetts did nothing; the 
Commonwealth did not even scold: she sat mute as the 
symbolic fish in the State House. The Bay State turned 
non-resistant ; — " passive obedience " should have been the 
motto then. So, when a bill was passed, putting the 
liberty of more than a twelfth part of her citizens at 
the mercy of a crew of legalized kidnappers, the Go- 
vernor of Massachusetts did nothing. Boston fired her 
hundred guns under the very eyes of John Hancock's 
house; her servile and her rich men complimented their 
representative for voting away the liberty of nine thousand 
of her fellow-citizens. Was Boston Massachusetts ? It 
is still the Governor. 

As the Government of Massachusetts did nothing, the 
next thing would have been for the people to come to- 
gether in a great mass meeting, and decree, as their fathers 
had often done, that so unjust a law should not be kept in 
the old Bay State, and appoint a committee to see that 
no man was kidnapped and carried off; and, if the kidnap- 
pers still insisted on kidnapping our brothers here in 
Massachusetts, the people could have found a way to 
abate that nuisance as easily as to keep off the stamped 



25 



paper in 1765. The commissioners of the Slave Act 
might as easily be dealt with as the commissioners of the 
Stamp Act. 

I love law, and respect law, and should be slow to 
violate it. I would suffer much, sooner than violate a 
statute that was simply inexpedient. There is no natural 
reason, perhaps, for limiting the interest of money to six 
per cent ; but as the law of Massachusetts forbids more, I 
would not take more. I should hate to interrupt the 
course of law, and put violence in its place. 

" The way of ancient ordinance, though it winds, 
Is yet no devious way. Straightforward goes 
The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path 
Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies, and rapid ; 
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches. 
My son ! the road the human being travels, — 
That on which blessing comes and goes, — doth follow 
The river's course, the valley's playful windings ; 
Curves round the corn-field and the hill of vines, 
Honoring the holy bounds of property ! 
And thus secure, though late, leads to its end." 

But when the rulers have inverted their function, and 
enacted wickedness into a law which treads down the 
unalienable rights of man to such degree as this, then I 
know no ruler but God, no law but natural justice. I tear 
the hateful statute of kidnappers to shivers ; I trample it 
underneath my feet. I do it in the name of all law ; in 
the name of justice and of man ; in the name of the dear 
God. 

But of all this nothing was done. The Governor did 
not assemble the Legislature, as he would if a twelfth part 
of the property in Massachusetts had thus been put at the 
mercy of legalized ruffians. There was no convention of the 
people of Massachusetts. True, there was a meeting at 
Faneuil Hall, a meeting chiefly of anti-slavery men ; leading 
4 



26 



Freesoilers were a little afraid of it, though some of them 
came honorably forward. A venerable man put his name 
at the head of the signers of the call, and wrote a noble- 
spirited letter to the meeting; Josiah Quincy was a 
Faneuil Hall name in 1850, as well as in 1765. It was 
found a little difficult to get what in Boston is called a 
"respectable" man to preside. Yet one often true sat 
in the chair that night, — Charles F. Adams did not 
flinch, when you wanted a man to stand tire. A brave, 
good clergyman, whose large soul disdains to be confined 
to sect or party, came in from Cambridge, and lifted up his 
voice to the God who brought up Israel out of the iron 
house of bondage, and our fathers from thraldom in a 
strange land ; thanking Him who created all men in His 
own image, and of one blood. Charles Lowell's prayer for 
all mankind will not soon be forgotten. The meeting was 
an honor to the men who composed it. The old spirit was 
there; philanthropy, which never fails; justice, that is not 
weary with continual defeat ; and faith in God, which is 
sure to triumph at the last. But what a reproach was the 
meeting to Boston ! " Respectability " was determined to 
kidnap. 

At that meeting a Committee of Vigilance was ap- 
pointed, and a very vigilant committee it has proved itself, 
having saved the liberty of three or four hundred citizens 
of Boston. Besides, it has done many things not to be 
spoken of now. I know one of its members who has helped 
ninety-five fugitives out of the United States. It would not 
be well to mention his name, — he has " levied war " too 
often, — the good God knows it. 

Other towns in the State did the same thing. Vigi- 
lance Committees got on foot in most of the great towns, 
in many of the small ones. In some places, all the people 
rose up against the Fugitive Slave Bill ; the whole town 
a vigilance committee. The country was right ; off of the 



27 



pavement, Liberty was the watchword ; on the pavement, 
it was money. But the Government of Massachusetts did 
nothing. Could the eight thousand nine hundred and 
seventy-five colored persons affect any election ? Was 
their vote worth bidding for ? 

The controlling men of the Whig party and of the 
Democratic party, they either did nothing at all, or else 
went over in favor of kidnapping; some of them had a 
natural proclivity that way, and went over " with alacrity." 
The leading newspapers in the great towns, — they, of 
course, went on the side of inhumanity, with few honorable 
exceptions. The political papers thought kidnapping 
would " save the Union ; " the commercial papers thought 
it would " save trade, " the great object for which the Union 
was established. 

How differently had Massachusetts met the Acts of 
Trade and the Stamp Act ! How are the mighty fallen ! 
Yet, if you could have got their secret ballot, I think fifteen 
out of every twenty voters, even in Boston, would have 
opposed the law. But the leading politicians and the 
leading merchants were in favor of the bill, and the execu- 
tion of it. There are two political parties in America : one 
of them is very large and well organized ; that is the Slave- 
soil party. It has two great subdivisions ; one is called 
Whig, the other Democratic : together they make up the 
great national Slave-soil party. It was the desire of that 
party to extend slavery ; making a national sin out of a 
sectional curse. They wished to '' re-annex " Massachusetts 
to the department of slave soil, and succeeded. We know 
the history of that party : who shall tell the future of its 
opponent ? There will be a to-morrow after to-day. 

The practical result was what the leading men of Boston 
desired : soon we had kidnappers in Boston. Some ruffians 
came here from Georgia, .to kidnap William and Ellen 
Craft. Among them came a jailer from Macon, a man of 



28 



infamous reputation, and character as bad as its repute; 
notoriously a cruel man, and hateful on that account even 
in Georgia. In the hand-bills, his face was described as 
"uncommon bad." It was worthy of the description. I 
saw the face ; it looked like total depravity incarnate in a 
born kidnapper. He was not quite welcome in Boston ; 
Massachusetts had not then learned to conquer her preju- 
dices, yet he found friends, got " a sort of a lawyer " to help 
him kidnap a man and his wife : a fee will hire such men 
any day. He was a welcome guest at the United States 
Hotel, which, however, got a little tired of his company, 
and warned him off. The commissioner applied to for 
aid in this business seemed to exhibit some signs of a con- 
science, and appeared a little averse to stealing a man. 
The Vigilance Committee put their eye on the kidnapper : 
he was glad to escape out of Boston with a whole skin. 
He sneaked off in a private way ; went back to Georgia ; 
published his story, partly true, false in part ; got into a 
quarrel in the street at Macon, — I traced out his wriggling 
trail for some distance back, — it was not the first brawl 
he had been in ; was stabbed to what is commonly called 
" the heart, " and fell unmistakably dead. Some worthy 
persons had told him, if he went to Boston, he would " rot 
in a Massachusetts jail ; " others, that they " hoped it would 
turn out so, for such an errand deserved such an end." 
Poor men of Georgia ! they knew the Boston of 1765, not 
of 1850 ; — the town of the Stamp Act, ruled by select 
men ; not the city of the Slave Act, ruled by a " mayor." 
Hughes came to save the " Union ! " 

That time the kidnappers went off without their prey. 
Somebody took care of Ellen Craft, and William took care 
of himself. They were parishioners of mine. Mr. Craft 
was a tall, brave man ; his countrymen, not nobler than he, 
were once bishops of Hippo and of Carthage. He armed 
himself, pretty well too. I inspected his weapons : it was 



29 



rather new business for me; New England ministers have 
not clone much in that line since the Revolution. His 
powder had a good kernel, and he kept it dry ; his pistols 
were of excellent proof, the barrels true and clean; the 
trigger went easy; the caps would not hang fire at the 
snap. I tested his poniard ; the blade had a good temper, 
stiff enough, yet springy withal; the point was sharp. 
There was no law for him but the law of nature ; he was 
armed and equipped " as that law directs." He walked the 
streets boldly ; but the kidnappers did not dare touch him. 
Some persons offered to help Mr. Craft purchase himself. 
Said he, " I will not give the man two cents for his ' right ' 
to me. I will buy myself, not with gold, but iron ! " That 
looked like " levying war, " not like conquering his preju- 
dices for liberty. William Craft did not obey " with 
alacrity." He stood his ground till the kidnappers had 
fled ; then he also must flee. Boston was no home for him. 
One of her most eminent clergymen had said, if a fugitive 
came to him, " I would drive him away from my door." 

William and Ellen Craft were at the " World's Fair," 
specimens of American manufactures, the working-tools of 
the South ; a proof of the democracy of the American 
State ; part of the " outward evidences " of the Christianity 
of the American church. " It is a great country," whence 
a Boston clergyman would drive William Craft from his 
door ! America did not compete very well with the Euro- 
pean States in articles sent to the Fair. A " reaping ma- 
chine " was the most quotable thing ; then a " Greek 
slave" in marble; next an American slave in flesh and 
blood. America was the only contributor of slaves: she 
had the monopoly of the article ; it is the great export of 
Virginia, — it was right to exhibit a specimen at the 
World's Fair. Visitors went to Westminster Abbey, and 
saw the monument of marble which Massachusetts erected 
to Lord George Howe, and thence to the Crystal Palace to 



30 



see the man and woman whom Massachusetts would not 
keep from being kidnapped in her Capital. 

In due time came the " Union meeting, " on the twenty- 
sixth day of November, 1850, in Faneuil Hall, in front of the 
pictures of Samuel Adams and John Hancock, — in the hall 
which once rocked to the patriotism of James Otis, thunder- 
ing against Acts of Trade and Writs of Assistance, " more 
eloquent than Chatham or Burke." The Union meeting 
was held in the face and eyes of George Washington. 

You remember the meeting. It was rather a remarkable 
platform ; uniformly " Hunker, " but decidedly heterogene- 
ous. Yet sin abolishes all historical and personal distinc- 
tions. Kidnapping, like misery, " makes strange bedfellows." 
Three things all the speakers on that occasion developed 
in common : A hearty abhorrence of the right ; a uniform 
contempt for the eternal law of God ; a common desire to 
kidnap a man. After all, the platform did not exhibit so 
strange a medley as it seemed at first : the difference in 
the speakers was chiefly cutaneous, only skin-deep. The 
reading and the speaking, the whining and the thundering, 
were all to the same tune. Pirates, who have just quarrelled 
about dividing the spoil, are of one heart when it comes to 
plundering and killing a man. 

That was a meeting for the encouragement of kidnap- 
ping ; not from the love of kidnapping in itself, but for the 
recompense of reward. I will not insult the common sense 
of respectable men with supposing that the talk about the 
" dissolution of the Union, " and the cry, " The Union is in 
peril this hour, " was any thing more than a stage-trick, which 
the managers doubtless thought was " well got up." So it 
was ; but, I take it, the spectators who applauded, as well 
as the actors who grimaced, knew that the " lion " was no 
beast, but only " Simon Snug the joiner." Indeed, the 
lion himself often told us so. However, I did know two 
very " respectable " men of Boston, who actually believed 



31 



the Union was in danger ; only two, — but they are men 
of such incomprehensible exiguity of intellect, that their 
names would break to pieces if spoken loud. 

Well, the meeting, in substance, told this truth : " Boston 
is willing ; you may come here, and kidnap any black man 
you choose. We will lend you the marshal, the commis- 
sioner, the tools of perjury, supple courts of law, and 
clergymen to bless the transaction, and editors to defend 
it ! " That was the plain English meaning of the meeting, 
of the resolutions and the speeches. It was so understood 
North and South. 

At the meeting itself it was declared that the Union was 
at the last gasp ; but the next morning the political doctors, 
the "medicine-men" of our mythology, declared the old 
lady out of danger. She sat up that day, and received her 
friends. The meeting was " great medicine ; " the crisis 
was passed. The Fugitive Slave Bill could " be executed 
in Boston," where the Writs of Assistance and the Stamp 
Act had been a dead letter : a man might be kidnapped in 
Boston any day. 

But the meeting was far from unanimous at the end. 
At the beginning a manly speech would have turned the 
majority in favor of the right. In November, 1850, half a 
dozen rich men might have turned Boston against the 
wicked law. But their interest lay the other side ; and 
" where the treasure is, there will the heart be also." Boston 
is bad enough, but bad only in spots ; at that time the spots 
showed, and some men thought all Boston was covered 
with the small-pox of the Union meeting: the scars will 
mark the faces of only a few. I wish I could heal those 
faces, which will have an ugly look in the eyes of pos- 
terity. 

The practical result of the meeting was what it was 
designed to be : soon we had other kidnappers in Boston. 
This time they found better friends : like consorteth with 



32 



like. A certain office in Boston became a huckstery of 
kidnappers' warrants ; soon the kidnappers had Shadrach 
in their fiery furnace, heated seven times hotter than before 
for "William and Ellen Craft. But the Lord delivered 
him out of their hands ; and he now sings " God save the 
Queen," in token of his delivery out of the hands of the 
kidnappers of " republican " Babylon. Nobody knows how 
he was delivered ; the rescue was officially declared " levy- 
ing war," the rescuers guilty of " treason." But, wonderful 
to say, after all the violations of law by the Court, and all 
the brow-beating by the attorneys, and all the perjury and 
other " amendments and enlargement of testimony " by 
witnesses, not a man was found guilty of any crime. Spite 
of " Union meetings," there is some respect for Massachu- 
setts law; spite of judicial attempts to pack the jury, it is 
still the great safeguard of the people ; spite of preaching, 
there is some virtue left ; and, though a clergyman would 
send back his mother into slavery, a Massachusetts jury 
will not send a man to jail for such an act as that. 

The case of Shadrach was not the last. Kidnappers 
came and kidnappers went : for a long time they got 
no spoil. I need not tell, must not tell, how they were 
evaded, or what help came, always in season. The 
Vigilance Committee did not sleep ; it was in " permanent 
session " much of the whole winter ; its eyes were in every 
place, beholding the evil and the good. The Government at 
Washington did not like this state of things, and stimu- 
lated the proper persons, as the keeper of a menagerie in 
private stirs up the hyenas and the cougars and the wolves, 
from a safe distance. There was a talk of " Sherman's 
flying-artillery " alighting at Boston ; but it flew over and 
settled at Newport, I think. Then there was to be a 
" garrison of soldiers " to enforce the law ; but the men in 
buckram did not appear. Then a " seventy-four gun ship 
was coming," to bombard Southack-street, I suppose. Still 



33 

it was determined that the " Union " was not quite safe ; it 
was in danger of a "dissolution;" the "medicine-men" of 
politics and commerce looked grave. True the Union had 
been " saved " again and again, till her " salvation " was a 
weariness ; she " was nothing bettered, but rather grew 
worse." All winter long, the Union was reported as in a 
chronic spasm of "dissolution;" so the "medicine-men" 
prescribed : A man kidnapped in Massachusetts, to be taken 
at the South ; with one scruple of lawyer, and two scruples 
of clergyman. That would set the Union on her legs. 
Boston was to furnish all this medicine. 

It was long before this city could furnish a kidnapped 
man. The Vigilance Committee parried the blow aimed at 
the neck of the fugitive. The country was on our side,— 
gave us money, help, men when needed. The guardians of 
Boston could not bear the taunt that she had not sent back 
a slave. New York had been before her ; the " City of Bro- 
therly Love," the home of Penn and Franklin, had assisted 
in kidnapping. It went on vigorously under the arm of a 
judge who appropriately bears the name of the great first 
murderer. No judge could be better entitled ; Kane and 
kidnapping are names conjuring well. Should Boston 
delay ? What a reproach to the fair fame of her merchants ! 
The history of Boston was against them ; America has not 
yet forgotten the conduct of Boston in the matter of the 
Stamp Act and Acts of Trade. She was deeply guilty of 
the Revolutionary War ; she still kept its Cradle of Liberty, 
and the bones of Adams and Hancock, — dangerous relics in 
any soil; they ought to have been " sent back" at the pas- 
sage of the Fugitive Slave Bill, and Faneuil Hall demolished. 
Bunker Hill Monument was within sight. Boston was sus- 
pected of not liking to kidnap a man. What a reproach it 
was to her ! — 8,975 colored persons in Massachusetts, and 
not a fugitive returned from Boston. September passed by, 
October, November, December, January, February, March ; 



34 

not a slave sent back in seven months ! What a disgrace to 
the Government of Boston, which longed to steal a man ; to 
the representative of Boston, who had voted for the theft ; 
to the Union Meeting, which loved the Slave Act ; to Mr. 
"Webster, who thought Massachusetts would obey "with 
alacrity," — his presidential stock looked down ; to his kid- 
nappers, who had not yet fleshed their fangs on a fugitive ; 
— what a reproach to the churches of commerce, and their 
patron, Saint Hunker ! One minister would drive a fugi- 
tive from his door; another send back his own mother: 
what was their divinity worth, if, in seven months, they 
could not convert a single parishioner, and celebrate the 
sacrament of kidnapping ! 

Yet, after all, not a slave went back from old Boston, 
though more than four hundred fled out of the city from 
the stripes of America, and got safe to the Cross of Eng- 
land ; not a slave went back from Boston, spite of her 
representative, her Government, her Union Meeting, and 
her clerical advice. She would comfort herself against this 
sorrow, but her heart was faint in her. Well might she 
say, " The harvest is passed, the winter is ended, and we 
are not saved." 

Yet the good men still left in Boston, their heart not 
wholly corrupt with politics and lust of gain, rejoiced that 
Boston was innocent of the great transgression of her 
sister-cities, and thought of the proud days of old. But 
wily men came here : it was .alleged they came from the 
South. They went round to the shops of jobbers, to the 
mills of manufacturers, and looked at large quantities of 
goods, pretending a desire to purchase to a great amount ; 
now it was a " large amount of domestics," then " a hundred 
thousand dollars worth of locomotives." " But then," said 
the wily men, " we do not like to purchase here ; you are in 
favor of the dissolution of the Union." " Oh, no," says the 
Northener: "not at all." "But you hate the South," re- 



35 



joins the feigned customer. "By no means," retorts the 
dealer. « But you have not sent back a slave," concludes 
the customer, " and I cannot trade with you." 

The trick was tried in several places, and succeeded. 
The story got abroad; it was reported that "large orders 
intended for Boston had been sent to New York, on account 
of the acquiescence of the latter city in the Fugitive Slave 
BUI." Trade is timid ; gold is a cowardly metal ; how the 
tinsel trembles when there is thunder in the sky! Em- 
plovers- threatened their workmen: « You must not attend 
anti-slavery meetings, nor speak against the Fugitive Slave 
Bill. The Union is in imminent danger." 

The country was much more hostile to man-stealing than 
the city; it mocked at the kidnappers. "Let them try 
their game in Essex county," said some of the newspapers 
in that quarter. Thereupon commercial and political jour- 
nals prepared to " cut off the supplies of the country," and 
"reduce the farmers and mechanics to submission." It 
was publicly advised that Boston should not trade with the 
obnoxious towns; nobody must buy shoes at Lynn. In 
1774, the Boston Port Bill shut up our harbor: it was a 
punishment for making tea against the law. But penuri- 
ous old Salem, whose enterprise is equalled by nothing but 
her " severe economy," opened her safe and commodious 
harbor to the merchants of Boston, with no cost of wharf- 
age ! But the Boston of 1850 was not equal to the penuri- 
ous old Salem of 1774. 

It was now indispensable that a slave should be sent 
back Trade was clamorous ; the administration were ur- 
gent ; the administration of Mr. Fillmore was in peril; 
Mr Webster's reputation for slave-hunting was at stake; 
the' Union was in danger; even the Marshal's warrant 
was on the point of "dissolution," it is said. A descent 
was planned upon New Bedford, where the followers of 
Fox and Penn had long hid the outcast. That attempt 



36 



came to nothing. The Vigilance Committee made a long 
arm, and " tolled the bell" of Liberty Hall in New Bedford. 
You remember the ghastly efforts at mirth made by some 
newspapers on the occasion. " The Vigilance Committee 
knows every thing," said one of the kidnappers. 

It now became apparent that Boston must furnish the 

victim. But some of the magistrates of Boston thought 

the Marshal was too clumsy to succeed, and offered him 

the aid of the city. So, on the night of the third of April, 

Thomas Simms was kidnapped by two police-officers of 

Boston, pretending to the bystanders that he was making a 

disturbance, and to him that he was arrested for theft. 

He was had into the " Court " of the kidnappers the next 

morning, charged with being a slave and fugitive. You will 

ask, How did it happen that Simms did not resist the 

ruffians who seized him ? He did resist ; but he was a 

rash, heedless young fellow, and had a most unlucky knife, 

which knocked at a kidnapper's bosom, but could not open 

the door. He was very imperfectly armed. He underwent 

what was called a " trial, " a trial without " due form of 

law ; " without a jury, and without a judge ; before a 

Slave Act Commissioner, who was to receive twice as 

much for sacrificing a victim as for acquitting a man. The 

Slave Commissioner decided that Mr. Simms was a slave. 

I take it, nobody beforehand doubted that the decision 

would be against the man. The commissioner was to 

receive five dollars more for such a decision. The law 

was framed with exquisite subtlety. Five dollars is a 

small sum, very small ; but things are great or little by 

comparison. 

But, in doing justice to this remarkable provision of the 
bill, let me do no injustice to the commissioner, who de- 
cided that a man was not a man, but a thing. I am told 
that he would not kidnap a man for five dollars ; I am told, 
on good authority, that it would be " no temptation to him." 



37 



I believe it ; for he also is " a man and a brother." I have 
heard good deeds of his doing, and believe that he did 
them. Total depravity does not get incarnated in any 
man. It is said that he refused both of the fees in this 
case ; the one for the " examination," and the other for the 
actual enslaving of Mr. Simms. 1 believe this also : there 
is historical precedent on record for casting down a larger 
fee, not only ten but thirty pieces of silver, also " the price 
of blood," money too base for a Jew to put in the public 
chest eighteen hundred years ago. 

A noble defence was made for Mr. Simms by three 
eminent lawyers, Messrs. Charles G. Loring, Robert Ran- 
toul, Jr., and Samuel E. Sewall, all honorable and able men. 
Their arguments were productions of no common merit. 
But of what use to plead law in such a " Court" of the 
Fugitive Slave Bill ; to appeal to the Constitution, when 
the statute is designed to thwart justice, and to destroy 
" the blessings of liberty " ? Of what avail to appeal to the 
natural principles of right before the tool of an adminis- 
tration which denies that there is any law of God higher 
than the schemes of a politician? It all came to nothing: 
a reasonable man would think that the human body and 
soul were " free papers " from the Almighty, sealed with 
" the image and likeness of God ; " but, of course, in a 
kidnapper's " Court, " such a certificate is of no value. 

You all know the public account of the kidnapping and 
"trial" of Mr. Simms. What is known to me in private, it 
is not time to tell : I will tell that to your children, perhaps 
your grandchildren. You know that the arrest was illegal, 
the officers of Massachusetts being forbidden by statute to 
help arrest a fugitive slave. Besides, it appears that they 
had no legal warrant to make the arrest : they lied, and 
pretended to arrest him for another alleged offence. He 
was on "trial "five days, — arraigned before a Slave Act 
Commissioner, — and never saw the face of a judge or any 



38 



judicial officer" but once. Before he could be removed to 
slavery, it was necessary that the spirit of the Consti- 
tution should be violated ; that its letter should be broken ; 
that the laws of Massachusetts should be cloven down ; 
its officers, its courts, and its people, treated with contempt. 
The Fugitive Slave Bill could only be enforced by the 
bayonet. 

You remember the aspect of Boston, from the fourth of 
April till the twelfth. You saw the chains about the Court 
House ; you saw the police of Boston, bludgeons in their 
hands, made journeymen kidnappers against their will. 
Poor fellows ! I pitied them. I knew their hearts. Once 
on a terrible time, — it was just as they were taking Mr. 
Simms from the Court House, a year ago this day, — some- 
body reproached them, calling them names fitting their 
conduct, and I begged him to desist ; a poor fellow clutched 
my arm, and said, " For God's sake, don't scold us : we 
feel worse than you do." But with the money of Boston 
against them, the leading clergy defending the crime 
against human nature, the City Government using its brief 
authority, squandering the treasure of Boston and its 
intoxicating drink for the same purpose, what could a 
police officer or a watchman do but obey orders ? They 
did it most unwillingly and against their conscience. 

You remember the conduct of the Courts of Massachu- 
setts ; the Supreme Court seemed to love the chains around 
the Court House ; for one by one the judges bowed and 
stooped and bent and cringed and curled and crouched 
down, and crawled under the chain. Who judges justly 
must himself be free. "What could you expect of a Court 
sitting behind chains ; of judges crawling under them to 
go to their own place ? — the same that you found. It was 
a very appropriate spectacle, — the Southern chain on the 
neck of the Massachusetts Court. If the Bay State were 
to send a man into bondage, it was proper that the Court 



39 

House should be in chains, and the judges should go 

under. 

You remember the " soldiers " called out, the celebrated 
« Simms Brigade, " liquored at Court Square and lodged 
at Faneuil Hall. Do you remember when soldiers were 
quartered in that place before? It was in 1768, when 
hireling soldiers came, slaves themselves, and sent by the 
British Ministry to « make slaves of us all ; " to sheathe 
their swords " in the bowels of their countrymen." That 
was a sight for the eyes of John Hancock, — the « Simms 
Brigade," in Faneuil Hall, called out to aid a Slave Act 
Commissioner in his attempt to kidnap one of his fellow 
citizens ! A man by the name of Samuel Adams drilled 
the police in the street. Samuel Adams of the old time left 
no children. We have lost the true names of men ; only 
Philadelphia keeps one. 

You remember the looks of men in the streets, the 
crowds that filled up Court Square. Men came in from 
the country, — came a hundred miles to look on; some of 
them had fathers who fought at Lexington and Bunker 
Hill. They remembered the old times, when, the day after 
the battle of Lexington, a hundred and fifty volunteers, 
with the firelock at the shoulder, took the road from New 
Ipswich to Boston. 

You have not forgotten the articles in the newspapers, 
Whig and Democratic both ; the conduct of the leading 
churches you will never forget. 

What an appropriate time that would have been for the 
Canadians to visit the « Athens of America, " and see the 
conduct of the " freest and most enlightened people in the 
world " ! If the great Hungarian could have come at that 
time, he would have understood the nature of " our peculiar 
institutions, " at least of our political men. 

You remember the decision of the Circuit judge, — himself 
soon to be summoned by death before the Judge who is no 



40 



respecter of persons, — not allowing the destined victim 
his last hope, " the great writ of right." The decision 
left him entirely at the mercy of the other kidnappers. 
The Court-room was crowded with " respectable people, " 
" gentlemen of property and standing : " they received the 
decision with " applause and the clapping of hands." 
Seize a lamb out of a flock, a wolf from a pack of wolves, 
the lambs bleat with sympathy, the wolves howl with 
fellowship of rage and fear ; but when a competitor for 
the Presidency sends back to eternal bondage a poor, 
friendless negro, asking only his limbs, wealthy gentlemen 
of Boston applaud the outrage. 

" judgment ! thou art fled to brutish beasts, 
And men have lost their reason ! " 

You remember still the last act in this sad tragedy, — 
the rendition of the victim. In the darkest hour of the 
night of the eleventh and twelfth of April, the kidnappers 
took him from his jail in Court Square, weeping as he left 
the door. Two kindly men went and procured the poor 
shivering boy a few warm garments for his voyage : I will 
not tell their names ; perhaps their charity was " treason, " 
and " levying war." Both of the men were clergymen, 
and had not forgotten the great human word : " Inasmuch 
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye have done it unto me." The chief kidnap- 
pers surrounded Mr. Simms with a troop of policemen, 
armed with naked swords ; that troop was attended by a 
larger crew of some two hundred policemen, armed with 
clubs. They conducted him, weeping as he went, towards 
the water-side ; they passed under the eaves of the old 
State House, which had rocked with the eloquence of 
James Otis, and shaken beneath the manly tread of both 
the Adamses, whom the cannon at the door could not terrify, 
and whose steps awakened the nation. They took him 



41 



on the spot where, eighty-one years before, the ground had 
drunk in the African blood of Christopher Attucks, shed by 
white men on the fifth of March ; brother's blood which 
did not cry in vain. They took him by the spot where the 
citizens of Massachusetts — some of their descendants were 
again at the place — scattered the taxed tea of Great 
Britain to the waters and the winds ; they put him on board 
the " Acorn, " owned by a merchant of Boston, who, once 
before, had kidnapped a man on his own account, and sent 
him off to the perdition of slavery, without even the help 
of a commissioner ; a merchant to whom it is immaterial 
what his children may say of him. 

" And this is Massachusetts liberty ! " said the victim of 
the avarice of Boston. No, Thomas Simms, that was not 
" Massachusetts liberty ; " it was all the liberty which the 
Government of Massachusetts wished you to have ; it was 
the liberty which the City Government presented you ; it 
was the liberty which Daniel Webster designed for you. The 
people of Massachusetts still believe that " all men are born 
free and equal," and " have natural, essential, and unalienable 
rights " " of enjoying and defending their lives and liber- 
ties," " of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness." 
Even the people of Boston believe that ; but certain politi- 
cians and merchants, to whom it is immaterial what their 
children say of them , — they wished you to be a slave, and 
it was they who kidnapped you. 

Some of you remember the religious meeting held on 
the spot, as this new "missionary" went abroad to a 
heathen land ; the prayer put up to Him who made of one 
blood all nations of the earth ; the hymns sung. They 
sung then, who never sung before, their " Missionary 
Hymn : " — 

" From many a Southern river 
And field of sugar-cane, 
They call us to deliver 
Their land from Slavery's chain." 



42 



On the spot where the British soldiers slew Christopher 
Attucks in 1770, other men of Boston resolved to hold a 
religious meeting that night. They were thrust out of the 
hall they had engaged. The next day was the Christian 
sabbath ; and at night a meeting was held in a " large 
upper room, " a meeting for mutual condolence and prayer. 
You will not soon forget the hymns, the scriptures, the 
speeches, and the prayers of that night. This assembly is 
one of the results of that little gathering. 

Well, all of that you knew before ; this you do not 
know. Thomas Simms, at Savannah, had a fair and 
handsome woman, by the courtesy of the master called his 
" wife." Simms loved his wife ; and, when he came to 
Boston, wrote, and told her of his hiding-place, the number 
in the street, and the name of the landlord. His wife had a 
paramour; that is a very common thing. The slave is 
" a chattel personal, to all intents, constructions, and purposes 
whatsoever." By the law of Georgia, no female slave 
owns her own virtue ; single or married, it is all the same. 
This African Delilah told her paramour of her husband's 
hiding-place. Blame her not : perhaps she thought " the 
Union is in peril this hour, " and wished to save it. Yet I 
doubt that she would send back her own mother; the 
African woman does not come to that ; only a Doctor of 
Divinity and Chaplain of the Navy. I do not suppose she 
thought she was doing her husband any harm in telling of 
his escape ; nay, it is likely that her joy was so full, she 
could not hold it in. The Philistine had ploughed with 
Simms's heifer, and found out his riddle: the paramour 
told the master Simms's secret ; the master sent the para- 
mour of Simms's wife to Boston to bring back the husband ! 
He was very welcome in this city, and got " the best of 
legal advice " at a celebrated office in Court-street. Boston 
said, " God speed the paramour ! " the Government of 



43 



Massachusetts, " God speed the crime ! " Money came to 
the pockets of the kidnappers ; the paramour went home, 
his object accomplished, and the master was doubtless 
grateful to the city of Boston, which honored thus the piety 
of its founders. 

He was taken back to Georgia in the " Acorn ; " some of 
the better sort of kidnappers went with him to Savannah ; 
there Simms was put in jail, and they received a public 
dinner. You know the reputation of the men : the work- 
men were worthy of their meat. In jail, Mr. Simms was 
treated with great severity ; not allowed to see his relatives, 
not even his mother. It is said that he was tortured every 
day with a certain number of stripes on his naked back ; 
that his master once offered to remit part of the cruelty, if 
he would ask pardon for running away. The man refused, 
and took the added blows. One day, the jail-doctor told 
the master that Simms was too ill to bear more stripes ; 
the master said, " Damn him ! give him the lashes, if he 
dies ; " — and the lashes fell. Be not troubled at that ; a 
slave is only a " chattel personal." Those blows were laid 
on by the speakers of the Union meeting ; it was only " to 
save the Union." I have seen a clerical certificate, setting 
forth that the " owner " of Mr. Simms was an excellent 
Christian, and " uncommonly pious." When a clergyman 
would send back his own mother, such conduct is sacra- 
mental in a layman. 

When Thomas Simms was unlawfully seized, and 
detained in custody against the law, the Governor of 
Massachusetts was in Boston; the Legislature was in 
session. It seems to me it was their duty to protect the 
man, and enforce the laws of the State ; but they did no 
such thing. 

As that failed, it seems to me that the next thing was for 
the public to come together in a vast multitude, and take 



44 

their brother out of the hands of his kidnappers, and set 
him at liberty. On the morning of the sixth of March, 
1770, the day after the Boston massacre, Faneuil Hall could 
not hold the town-meeting. They adjourned to the Old 
South, and demanded "the immediate removal of the 
troops;" at sun-down there was not a Red-coat in Boston. 
But the people in this case did no such thing. 

The next thing was for the Vigilance Committee to 
deliver the man : the country has never forgiven the Com- 
mittee for not doing it. I am Chairman of the executive 
committee of the Vigilance Committee ; I cannot now 
relate all that was done, all that was attempted. I will 
tell that when the time comes. Yet I think you will 
believe me when I say the Vigilance Committee did all 
they could. But see some of the difficulties in their way. 

There was in Boston a large number of crafty, rich, de- 
signing, and " respectable " men, who wanted a man kid- 
napped in Boston, and sent into slavery ; they wanted that 
for the basest of purposes, — for the sake of money; they 
wanted the name of it, the reputation of kidnapping a man. 
They protected the kidnappers, — foreign and domestic; 
egged them on, feasted them. It has been said that fifteen 
hundred men volunteered to escort their victim out of 
the State ; that some of them are rich men. I think the 
majority of the middle class of men were in favor of free- 
dom ; but, in Boston, what is a man without money ? and, 
if he has money, who cares how base his character may be ? 
You demand moral character only of a clergyman. Some 
of the richest men were strongly in favor of freedom ; but, 
alas ! not many, and for the most part they were silent. 

The City Government of that period I do not like to speak 
of. It oilers to a man, as cool as I am, a temptation to use 
language which a gentleman does not wish to apply to any 
descendant of the human race. But that Government, en- 
couraging its thousand and five hundred illegal groggeries, 



45 



and pretending a zeal for law, was for kidnapping a man ; 
so the police-force of the city was unlawfully put to that 
work ; soldiers were called out ; the money of the city 
flowed freely, and its rum. I do not suppose that the kid- 
napping was at all disagreeable to the " conscience " of the 
City Government; they seemed to like it, and the conse- 
quences thereof. 

The prominent clergy of Boston were on the same side. 
The Dollar demanded that ; and whither it went, thither 
went they. "Like people like priest" was a proverb two 
thousand five hundred years ago, and is likely to hold its 
edge for a long time to come. Still there were some very 
noble men among the clergy of Boston : we found them in 
all denominations. 

Then the Courts of Massachusetts refused to issue the 
writ of Habeas Corpus. They did not afford the smallest 
protection to the poor victim of Southern tyranny. 

Not a sheriff could be got to serve a writ; the high 
sheriff refused, all his deputies held back. Who could 
expect them to do their duty when all else failed ? 

The Legislature was then in session. They sat from 
January till May. They knew that eight thousand nine 
hundred and seventy-five citizens of Massachusetts had no 
protection but public opinion, and in Boston that opinion 
was against them. They saw four hundred citizens of Bos- 
ton flee off for safety ; they saw Shadrach captured in 
Boston ; they saw him kidnapped, and put in jail against 
their own law ; they saw the streets filled with soldiers to 
break the laws of Massachusetts, the police of Boston em- 
ployed in the same cause ; they saw the sheriffs refuse to 
serve a writ ; they saw Thomas Simms kidnapped and car- 
ried from Boston ; and, in all the five months of the session, 
they did not pass a law to protect their fellow-citizens; 
they did not even pass a " resolution " against the extension 
of slavery! The Senate had a committee to investigate 



46 



the affair in Boston. They sat in the Senate-hall, and were 
continually insulted by the vulgarest of men ; insulted not 
only with impudence, but impunity, by men who confessed 
that they were violating the laws of Massachusetts. 

Massachusetts had then a Governor who said he " would 
not harbor a fugitive slave." What did he do ? He sat 
as idle as a feather in the chair of state ; he left the sheriffs 
as idle as he. While the laws of Massachusetts were 
broken nine days running, the successor of John Hancock 
sat as idle as a feather in the chair of state, and let kid- 
napping go on ! I hate to say these things. The Governor 
is a young man, not without virtues; but think of such 
things in Massachusetts! 

This is my public defence of the Vigilance Committee. 
The private defence shall come, if I live long enough. 

It was on the nineteenth day of April that Thomas 
Simms was landed at Savannah, and put in the public jail 
of the city. Do you know what that day stands for in 
your calendar ? Some of your fathers knew very well. Ten 
miles from here is a little monument at Lexington, " sacred 
to liberty and the rights of mankind," telling that on the 
19th of April, 1775, some noble men stood up there against 
the army of England, "fired the shot, heard round the 
world," and laid down their lives " in the sacred cause of 
God and their country ; " six miles further off is another 
little monument at Concord ; two miles further back, a 
third, all dating from the same day. The War of Revolu- 
tion began at Lexington, to end at Yorktown. Its first 
battle was on the 19th of April. Hancock and Adams 
lodged at Lexington with the minister. One raw morning, 
a little after daybreak, a tall man, with a large forehead 
under a three-cornered hat, drew up his company of seventy 
men on the green, farmers and mechanics like himself; 
only one is left now, the boy that " played " the men to the 



47 



spot. They wheeled into line to wait for the Regulars. 
The captain ordered every man to load " his piece with 
powder and ball." " Don't fire," were his words, " unless 
fired upon ; but, if they want a war, let it begin here." 

The Regulars came on. Some Americans offered to run 
away from their post. Said their captain, " I will run 
through the body the first man that leaves his place." The 
English commander cried out, " Disperse, you rebels ; lay 
down your arms, and disperse." Not a man stirred. 
" Disperse, you damned rebels ! " shouted he again. Not a 
man stirred. He ordered the vanguard to fire ; they did so, 
but over the heads of our fathers. Then the whole main 
body levelled their pieces, and there was need of ten new 
graves in Lexington. A few Americans returned the shot. 
British blood stained the early grass, which " waved with the 
wind." " Disperse and take care of yourselves," was the cap- 
tain's last command ; and, after the British fired their third 
round, there lay the dead, and there stood the soldiers ; 
there was a battle-field between England and America, 
never to be forgot, never to be covered over. The " mother- 
country " of the morning was the " enemy " at sunrise. " Oh, 
what a glorious morning is this ! " said Samuel Adams. 

The nineteenth of April was a good day for Boston to 
land a fugitive slave at Savannah, and put him in jail, 
because he claimed his liberty. Some of you had fathers 
in the Battle of Lexington, many of you relations; some 
of you, I think, keep trophies from that day, won at Con- 
cord or at Lexington. I have seen such things, — powder- 
horns, shoe-buckles, and other things, from the nineteenth of 
April, 1775. Here is a Boston trophy from April nineteenth, 
1851. This is the coat of Thomas Simms. He wore it 
on the third of April last. Look at it. You see he did not 
give up with alacrity, nor easily " conquer" his " prejudices " 
for liberty. See how they rent the sleeve away ! His coat 
was torn to tatters. " And this is Massachusetts liberty!" 



48 



Let the kidnappers come up and say, " Massachusetts ! 
knowest thou whether this be thy son's coat or not ? " 

Let Massachusetts answer : " It is my son's coat ! An 
evil beast hath devoured him. Thomas is without doubt 
rent in pieces ! " 

Yes, Massachusetts ! that is right. It was an evil beast 
that devoured him, worse than the lion which comes up 
from the swelling of Jordan : it was a kidnapper. Thomas 
was rent with whips. Go, Massachusetts ! keep thy trophies 
from Lexington. I will keep this to remind me of Boston 
and her dark places, which are full of cruelty. 

After the formation of the Union, a monument was 
erected at Beacon Hill, to commemorate the chief events 
which led to the American Revolution, and helped secure 
liberty and independence. Some of you remember the in- 
scriptions thereon. If a monument were built to comme- 
morate the events which are connected with the recent 
" Salvation of the Union," the inscriptions might be: — 

Union Saved by Daniel Webster's Speech at "Washington, March 7, 1850. 
Union Saved by Daniel Webster's Speech at Boston, April 30, 1850. 
Union Saved by the Passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill, Sept. 18, 1850. 
Union Saved by the arrival of Kidnapper Hughes at Boston, Oct. 19, 1850. 
Union Saved by the " Union Meeting " at Faneuil Hall, Nov. 26, 1850. 
Union Saved by kidnapping Thomas Simms at Boston, April 3, 1851. 
Union Saved by the Rendition of Thomas Simms at Savannah, April 19, 
1851. — " Oh, what a glorious morning is this ! " 

Sicut Patribus sit Deus Nobis. 

The great deeds of the American Revolution were also 
commemorated by medals. The Boston kidnapping is 
worthy of such commemoration, and would be an appro- 
priate subject for a medal, which might bear on one side a 
bas-relief of the last scene of that act : the Court House in 
chains; the victim in the hollow square of Boston police, 
their swords and bludgeons in their hands. The motto 
might be — The Great Object of Government is the 



49 



Protection of Property. The other side might bear a 
Boston Church, surrounded by shops and taverns taller than 
itself, with the twofold inscription : No Higher Law ; and 

I WOULD SEND BACK MY OWN MOTHER. 

What a change from the Boston of John Hancock to 
the Boston of the Fugitive Slave Bill ; from the town which 
hung Grenville and Huske in effigy, to the city which ap- 
proved Mr. Webster's speech in defence of slave-catching! 
Boston tolled her bells for the Stamp Act, and fired a hun- 
dred holiday cannons for the Slave Act! Massachusetts, 
all New England, has been deeply guilty of slavery and the 
slave-trade. An exile from Germany finds the chief street 
of Newport paved by a tax of ten dollars a head on all 
the slaves landed there ; the little town sent out Chris- 
tian New England rum, and brought home Heathen men 
for sale. Slavery came to Boston with the first settlers. 
In 1639, Josselyn found here a negro woman in bondage 
refusing to become the mother of slaves. There was much 
to palliate the offence : all northern Europe was stained with 
the crime. It did not end in Westphalia till 1789. But 
the consciences of New England never slept easy under that 
sin. Before 1641, Massachusetts ordered that a slave should 
be set free after seven years' service, reviving a merciful 
ordinance of the half-barbarous Hebrews a thousand years 
before Christ. In 1645, the General Court of Massachusetts 
sent back to Guinea two black men illegally enslaved, and 
made a law forbidding the sale of slaves, except captives 
in war, or men sentenced to sale for crime. Even they 
were set free after seven years' service. Still slavery always 
existed here, spite of the law ; the newspapers once con- 
tained advertisements of " negro-babies to be given away " 
in Boston ! Yet New England never loved slavery : hard 
and cruel as the Puritans were, they had some respect for 
the letter of the New Testament. In 1700, Samuel Sewall 
7 



50 

protested against "the selling of Joseph;" as another 
Sewall, in 1851, protested against the selling of Thomas. 
There was a great controversy about slavery in Massachu- 
setts in 1766 ; even Harvard College took an interest in 
freedom, setting its young men to look at the rights of man. 
In 1767, a bill was introduced to the General Assembly to 
prevent " the unnatural and unwarrantable custom of en- 
slaving mankind." It was killed by the Hunkers of that 
time. In 1774, a bill of a similar character passed the 
Assembly, but was crushed by the veto of Governor Hutch- 
inson. 

In 1788, three men were illegally kidnapped at Boston 
by " one Avery, a native of Connecticut," and carried off" to 
Martinico. Then we had John Hancock for governor, and 
he wrote to all the governors of the West India Islands in 
favor of the poor creatures. The Boston Association of 
Congregational Ministers petitioned the Legislature to pro- 
hibit Massachusetts ships from engaging in the foreign or 
domestic slave-trade. Dr. Belknap was a member of the 
Association, — a man worthy to have Channing for a 
successor to his humanity. The Legislature passed a bill 
for the purpose. In July the three men were brought back 
from the West Indies : says Dr. Belknap, " It was a day of 
jubilee for all the friends of justice and humanity." 

Wliat a change from the Legislature, clergy, and governor 
of 1788 to that of 1851 ! Alas ! men do not gather figs of 
thistles. The imitators of this Avery save the Union now : 
he saved it before it was formed. How is the faithful city 
become a harlot! It was full of judgment: righteousness 
lodged in it, but now murderers. 

What is the cause of this disastrous change ! It is the 
excessive love of money which has taken possession of the 
leading men. In 1776, General Washington said of Massa- 
chusetts : " Notwithstanding all the public spirit that is 



51 



ascribed to this people, there is no nation under the sun 
that I ever came across, which pays greater adoration to 
money than they do." What would he say now? Selfish- 
ness and covetousness have flowed into the commercial 
capital of New England, seeking their fortune. Boston is 
now a shop, with the aim of a shop, and the morals of a 
shop, and the politics of a shop. 

Said Thomas Jefferson : Governments are instituted 
amongst men to secure the natural and unalienable right 
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All America 
said so on the fourth of July, 1776. But we have changed 
all that. Said Daniel Webster, at New York, 1850 : " The 
great object of government is the protection of property at 
home, and respect and renown abroad." John Hancock 
had some property to protect; but he said the design of 
government is " security to the persons and the properties 
of the governed." He put the persons first, and the property 
afterwards ; the substance of man before his accidents. 
Said Hancock again : " It is the indispensable duty of 
every member of society to promote, as far as in him lies, 
the prosperity of every individual." Says the Governor 
of Massachusetts : " I would not harbor a fugitive." Says 
a clergyman : I would send back my own mother ! If the 
great object of government is the protection of property, 
why should a governor personally harbor a fugitive, or offi- 
cially protect nine thousand colored men ? Why should 
not a clergyman send to slavery his mother, to save the 
Union, or to save a bank, or to gain a chaplaincy in the 
navy ? But, if this be so, then what a mistake it was in 
Jesus of Nazareth to say, " A man's life consisteth not in 
the abundance of things that he possesseth " ! Verily the 
meat is more than the life ; the body less than raiment. 
Christ was mistaken in his " Beware of covetousness:" he 
should have said, " Beware of philanthropy ; drive off a 
fugitive ; send back your mother to bondage. Blessed are 



52 

the kidnappers, for they shall be called the children of 

God." 

Even Thomas Paine had a Christianity which would 
choke at the infidelity and practical atheism taught in the 
blessed name of Jesus in the Boston churches of commerce 
to-day. The Gospel relates that Jesus laid his hands on 
men to bless them ; on the deaf, and they heard ; on 
the dumb, and they spoke; on the blind, and they saw; 
on the lame, and they walked; on the maimed and the 
sick, and they were whole. But Christian Boston lays its 
hand on a whole and free man, and straightway he owns 
no eyes, no ears, no tongue, no hands, no foot: he is a 
slave. 

In 1761, the Massachusetts of John Hancock would not 
pay threepence duty on a pound of tea, to have all the 
protection of the British crown : ninety years later, the 
Boston of Daniel Webster, to secure the trade of the South, 
and a dim, delusive hope of a protective tariff, will pay any 
tax in men. It is no new thing for her citizens to be im- 
prisoned at Charleston and New Orleans, because they are 
black. What merchant cares? It does not interrupt trade. 
Five citizens of Massachusetts have just been sent into 
bondage by a Southern State. Of what consequence is 
that to the politicians of the Commonwealth? Our pro- 
perty is worth six hundred million dollars. By how much 
is a man worth less than a dollar! The penny-wisdom of 
" Poor Richard" is the great gospel to the city which cradled 
the benevolence of Franklin. 

Boston capitalists do not hesitate to own Southern planta- 
tions, and buy and sell men ; Boston merchants do not scru- 
ple to let their ships for the domestic slave-trade, and carry 
the child from his mother in Baltimore, to sell him to a 
planter in Louisiana or Alabama ; some of them glory in 
kidnapping their fellow-citizens in Boston. Most of the 
slave-ships in the Atlantic are commanded by New Eng- 



53 



land men. A few years ago, one was seized by the British 
Government at Africa, " full of slaves ; " it was owned in 
Boston, had a " clearance " from our harbor, and left its 
name on the books of the insurance offices here. The 
controlling men of Boston have done much to promote, to 
extend, and to perpetuate slavery. Why not, if the protec- 
tion of property be the great object of Government ? why 
not, if interest is before justice ? why not, if the higher law 
of God is to be sneered at in state and church ? 

When the Fugitive Slave Bill passed, the six New Eng- 
land States lay fast asleep : Massachusetts slept soundly, 
her head pillowed on her unsold bales of cotton and of 
woollen goods, dreaming of " orders from the South." Jus- 
tice came to waken her, and whisper of the peril of nine 
thousand citizens ; and she started in her sleep, and, being 
frighted, swore a prayer or two, then slept again. But Boston 
woke, — sleeping, in her shop, with ears open, and her eye on 
the market, her hand on her purse, dreaming of goods for 
sale, — Boston woke broadly up, and fired a hundred guns 
for joy. O Boston, Boston! if thou couldst have known, 
in that thine hour, the things which belong unto thy peace! 
But no : they were hidden from her eyes. She had prayed 
to her god, to Money ; he granted her the request, but 
sent leanness into her soul. 

Yet at first I did not believe that the Fugitive Slave Bill 
could be executed in Boston ; even the firing of the cannons 
did not convince me ; I did not think men bad enough for 
that. I knew something of wickedness ; I knew what love 
of money could do ; I had seen it blind most venerable 
eyes. I knew Boston was a Tory town ; the character of 
upstart Tories — I thought I knew that : the man just risen 
from the gutter knocks down him that is rising. But I 
knew also the ancient history of Boston. I remembered 
the first commissioner we ever had in New England, — Sir 
Edmund Andros, sent here by the worst of the Stuarts " to 



54 



rob us of our charters in North America." He was a terrible 
tyrant. The liberty of Connecticut fled into the " Great 
Oak at Hartford : " — 

" The Charter Oak it was the treo 
That saved our blessed liberty." 

" All Connecticut was in the Oak.'" But Massachusetts 
laid her hands on the commissioner, — he was her Gover- 
nor also, — put him in jail, and sent him home for trial in 
1689. William of Orange thought we " served him right." 
The name of "commissioner" has always had an odious 
meaning to my mind. I did not think a commissioner at 
kidnapping men would fare better than Sir Edmund kid- 
napping charters. I remembered the Writs of Assistance, 
and thought of James Otis ; the Stamp Act, " Adams and 
Liberty " came to my mind. I did not forget the way our 
fathers made tea with salt-water. I looked up at that tall 
obelisk ; I took courage, and have since reverenced that 
" monument of piled stones." I could not think Mr. Web- 
ster wanted the law enforced, spite of his speeches and 
letters. It was too bad to be true of him. I knew he was 
a bankrupt politician, in desperate political circumstances, 
gaming for the Presidency, with the probability of getting 
the vote of the county of Suffolk, and no more. I knew 
he was not rich : his past history showed that he would do 
almost any thing for money, which he seems as covetous 
to get as prodigal to spend. I knew that " a man in falling 
will catch at a red-hot iron hook." I saw why Mr. Web- 
ster caught at the Fugitive Slave Bill : it was a great fall 
from the coveted and imaginary Presidency down to actual 
private life at Marshiield ; it was a great fall. The Slave 
Act was the red-hot iron hook to a man " falling like 
Lucifer, never to hope again." The temptation was im- 
mense. I could not think he meant to hold on there ; he 
did often relax his grasp, yet only to clutch it the tighter. 



55 

I did not like to think he had a bad heart. I hoped he 
would shrink from blasting the head of a single fugitive 
with that dreadful "thunder" of his speech ; that he would 
not like to execute his own law. Men in Boston said it 
could not be executed. Even cruel men that I knew 
curled at the thought of kidnapping a man who fills their 
glasses with wine. The law was not fit to be executed : 
that was the general opinion in Boston at first. So, when 
kidnapper Hughes came here for William Craft, even the 
commissioner applied to was a little shy of the business. 
Yet that commissioner is not a very scrupulous man. I 
mean, in the various parties he has wriggled through, he 
has not left the reputation of any excessive and maidenly 
coyness in moral matters, and a genius for excessive scru- 
pulousness as to means or ends. Even a Hunker minister 
informed me that he " would certainly aid a fugitive." But, 
after the Union Meeting, the clouds of darkness gathered 
together, and it set in for a storm ; the kidnappers went 
and rough-ground their swords on the grindstone of the 
church, a navy chaplain turning the crank ; and all our 
hopes fell to the ground. 

" Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, 
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen ; 
But seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 

The relentless administration of Mr. Fillmore has been 
as cruel as the law they framed. Mr. Webster has thrust 
the red-hot iron hook into the flesh of thousands of his fel- 
low-citizens. He and his kidnappers came to a nation 
scattered and peeled, meted out and trodden down ; they 
have ground the poor creatures to powder under their hoof. 
I wish I could find an honorable motive for such deeds, but 
hitherto no analysis can detect it, no solar microscope of 
charity can bring such a motive to light. The end is base, 
the means base, the motive base. 



56 



Yet one charge has been made against the Government, 
which seems to me a little harsh and unjust. It has been 
said the administration preferred low and contemptible men 
as their tools ; judges who blink at law, advocates of in- 
famy, and men cast off from society for perjury, for name- 
less crimes, and sins not mentionable in English speech ; 
creatures " not so good as the dogs that licked Lazarus' 
sores ; but, like flies, still buzzing upon any thing that is 
raw." There is a semblance of justice in the charge: wit- 
ness Philadelphia, Buffalo, Boston ; witness New York. It 
is true for kidnappers the Government did take men that 
looked "like a bull-dog just come to man's estate;" men 
whose face declared them, " if not the devil, at least his 
twin-brother." There are kennels of the courts wherein 
there settles down all that the law breeds most foul, loath- 
some, and hideous and abhorrent to the eye of day ; there 
this contaminating puddle gathers its noisome ooze, slowly, 
stealthily, continually agglomerating its fetid mass by spon- 
taneous cohesion, and sinking by the irresistible gravity of 
rottenness into that abhorred deep, the lowest, ghastliest pit 
in all the subterranean vaults of human sin. It is true the 
Government has skimmed the top and dredged the bottom 
of these kennels of the courts, taking for its purpose the 
scum and sediment thereof, the Squeers, the Fagins, and 
the Quilps of the law, the monsters of the court. Blame 
not the Government : it took the best that it could get. It 
was necessity, not will, which made the selection. Such is 
the stuff that kidnappers must be made of. If you wish 
to kill a man, it is not bread you buy : it is poison. Some 
of the instruments of Government were such as one does 
not often look upon. But, of old time, an inquisitor was 
always "a horrid-looking fellow, as beseemed his trade." 
It is only justice that a kidnapper should bear "his great 
commission in his look." 



57 

Said John Hancock in a town full of British soldiers in 
1774, on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre : — 

" Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a 
den of thieves. Remember, my friends, from whom you 
sprang. Let not a meanness of spirit, unknown to those 
whom you boast of as your fathers, excite a thought to the 
dishonor of your mothers. I conjure you by all that is 
dear, by all that is honorable, by all that is sacred, not only 
that ye pray, but that you act ; that, if necessary, ye fight, 
and even die, for the prosperity of our Jerusalem. Break 
in sunder, with noble disdain, the bonds with which the 
Philistines have bound you. Suffer not yourselves to be 
betrayed by the soft arts of luxury and effeminacy into the 
pit digged for your destruction. Despise the glare of 
wealth. That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy 
villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost 
deserve to be enslaved: they plainly show that wealth, 
however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be pre- 
ferred to virtue. 

" But I thank God that America abounds in men who 
are superior to all temptation, whom nothing can divert 
from a steady pursuit of the interest of their country, who 
are at once its ornament and safeguard. And sure I am 
I should not incur your displeasure, if I paid a respect so 
justly due to their much-honored characters, in this place ; 
but, when I name an Adams, such a numerous host of fel- 
low-patriots rush upon my mind, that I fear it would take 
up too much of your time, should I attempt to call over 
the illustrious roll : but your grateful hearts will point you 
to the men ; and then revered names, in all succeeding 
times, shall grace the annals of America. From them, let 
us, my friends, take example ; from them let us catch the 
divine enthusiasm ; and feel, each for himself, the godlike 
pleasure of diffusing happiness on all around us; of de- 
livering the oppressed from the iron grasp of tyranny; 
8 



58 



of changing the hoarse complaint and bitter moans of 
wretched slaves into those cheerful songs which freedom 
and Contentment must inspire. There is a heartfelt satis- 
faction in reflecting on our exertions for the public weal, 
which all the sufferings an enraged tyrant can inflict will 
never take away, which the ingratitude and reproaches of 
those whom we have saved from ruin cannot rob us of. 
The virtuous assertor of the rights of mankind merits a 
reward, which even a want of success in his endeavors to 
save his country, the heaviest misfortune which can befall 
a genuine patriot, cannot entirely prevent him from receiv- 
ing." 

But, in 1850, Mr. Webster bade Massachusetts " conquer 
her prejudices." He meant the " prejudices " in favor of 
justice, in favor of the unalienable rights of man, in favor 
of Christianity. Did Massachusetts obey? The answer 
was given a year ago. " Despise the glare of wealth," said 
the richest man in New England in 1774 : the " great 
object of government is the protection of property," said 
" the great intellect " of America in 1850. Said John Han- 
cock seventy-eight years ago, " We dread nothing but 
slavery : " said Daniel Webster two years ago, Massachu- 
setts will obey the Fugitive Slave Bill "with alacrity." 
Boston has forgotten John Hancock. 

Said Joseph Warren in 1775, " Scourges and death with 
tortures are far less terrible than slavery." Now it is " a 
great blessing to the African." Said the same Warren, 
" The man who meanly submits to wear a shackle con- 
temns the noblest gift of Heaven, and impiously affronts 
the God that made him free." Now clergymen tell us that 
kidnappers are ordained of God, and passive obedience is 
every man's duty. Said the town of Boston in 1770, 
" Mankind will not be reasoned out of the feelings of 
humanity." Says the pulpit of Boston in 1850, Send back 
your brother. 



59 



The talk of dissolution is no new trick. Hear General 
Warren, in the spirit of 1775 : " Even anarchy itself, that 
bugbear held up by the tools of power, is infinitely less 
dangerous to mankind than arbitrary government. Anar- 
chy can be but of short duration ; for, when men are at 
liberty to pursue that course which is most conducive to 
their own happiness, they will soon come into it, and from 
the rudest state of nature order and good government must 
soon arise. But tyranny, when once established, entails its 
curses on a nation to the latest period of time, unless some 
daring genius, inspired by Heaven, shall, unappalled by 
danger, bravely form and execute the design of restoring 
liberty and life to his enslaved and murdered country." 
Now a man would send his mother into slavery to save the 
Union ! 

Will Boston be called on again to return a fugitive? 
Not long since, some noble ladies in a neighboring town, 
whose religious hand often reaches through the darkness to 
save men ready to perish, related to me a fresh tale of woe. 
Here is their letter of the first of March : — 

" Only ten days ago, we assisted a poor, deluded sufferer 
in effecting his escape to Canada, after having been cheated 
into the belief by the profligate captain who brought him 
from the South, that he would be in safety as soon as he 
reached Boston. . . . He had accumulated two hundred 
dollars, which he put into the captain's hands, upon his 
agreeing to secrete him, and bring him to Boston. The 
moment the vessel touched the wharf, the scoundrel bade 
the poor fellow be off in a moment ; and he then discovered 
his liability to be pursued and taken. It was then mid- 
night, and the cold was intense. He wandered about the 
streets, and in the morning strolled into the De- 
pot, and came out to in the earliest cars. On 

reaching this town, he had the sense to find out the only 
man of color who lives here, , a very respectable 



60 

barber. Mr. sheltered him that day and the follow- 
ing night ; and early the next morning a sufficient sum had 
been collected for him to pay his passage to Canada, and 
supply his first wants after arriving there; but, in the 
meanwhile, the villainous captain bears off his hard earn- 
ings in triumph." 

I must not give the names of the ladies : they are liable 
to a fine of a thousand dollars each, and imprisonment 
for six months. It was atrocious in the captain to steal 
the two hundred dollars from the poor captive; but the 
Government of the United States would gladly steal his 
body, his limbs, his life, his children, to the end of time. 
The captain was honorable in comparison with the kidnap- 
pers. Perhaps he also wished to " Save the Union." — 
Sicut Patribus sit Deus Nobis! 

What a change from the Boston of our fathers ! Where 
are the children of the patriots of old ? Tories spawned 
their brood in the streets : Adams and Hancock died with- 
out a child. Has nature grown sterile of men ? is there no 
male and manly virtue left ? are we content to be kidnap- 
pers of men ? No. Here still are noble men, men of the 
good old stock ; men of the same brave, holy soul. No 
time of trial ever brought out nobler heroism than last 
year. Did we want money, little Methodist churches in 
the country, the humanest churches in New England, 
dropped their widow's mite into the chest. From minis- 
ters of all modes of faith but the popular one in money, 
from all churches but that of commerce, there came gifts, 
offers of welcome, and words of lofty cheer. Here, in Bos- 
ton, there were men thoroughly devoted to the defence of 
their poor, afflicted brethren ; even some clergymen faithful 
among the faithless. But they were few. It was only a 
handful who ventured to be faithful to the true and right. 
The great tide of humanity, which once filled up this 



61 

place, had ebbed off: only a few perennial springs poured 
out their sweet and unfailing wealth to these weary wan- 
derers. 

Yet Boston is rich in generous men, in deeds of charity, 
in far-famed institutions for the good of man. In this she 
is still the noblest of the great cities of the land. I honor 
the self-sacrificing, noble men ; the women whose loving- 
kindness never failed before. Why did it fail at this time ? 
Men fancied that their trade was in peril. It was an idle 
fear ; even the dollar obeys the " Higher Law," which its 
worshippers deny. Had it been true, Boston had better 
lose every farthing of her gold, and start anew with nothing 
but the wilderness, than let her riches stand between us 
and our fellow-men. Thy money perish, if it brutalize thy 
heart ! 

I wish I could believe the motives of men were good in 
this, that they really thought the nation was in peril. But 
no ; it cannot be. It was not the love of country which 
kept the " compromises of the Constitution " and made the 
Fugitive Slave Bill. I pity the politicians who made this 
wicked law, made it in the madness of their pride. I 
pity that son of New England, who, against his nature, 
against his early history, drew his sword to sheathe it 
in the bowels of his brother-man. The melancholiest 
spectacle in all this land, self-despoiled of the lustre which 
would have cast a glory on his tomb, and sent his name a 
watchword to many an age, — now he is the companion of 
kidnappers, and a proverb amongst honorable men, with 
the certainty of leaving a name to be hissed at by man- 
kind. 

I pity the kidnappers, the poor tools of men almost as 
base. I would not hurt a hair of their heads ; but I would 
take the thunder of the moral world, and dash its bolted 
lightning on this crime of stealing men, till the name of 
kidnapping should be like Sodom and Gomorrah. It is 



62 



piracy to steal a man in Guinea ; what is it to do this in 
Boston ? 

I pity the merchants who, for their trade, were glad to 
steal their countrymen ; I wish them only good. Debate 
in yonder hall has shown how little of humanity there is 
in the trade of Boston ; she looks on all the horrors which 
intemperance has wrought, and daily deals in every street ; 
she scrutinizes the jails, — they are filled by rum; she looks 
into the alms-houses, crowded full by rum; she walks 
her streets, and sees the perishing classes fall, mowed 
down by rum ; she enters the parlors of wealthy men, 
looks into the bridal chamber, and meets death : the ghosts 
of the slain are there, — men slain by rum. She knows 
it all, yet says, " There is an interest at stake!" — the in- 
terest of rum ; let man give way ! Boston does this to-day. 
Last year she stole a man ; her merchants stole a man ! 
The sacrifice of man to money, when shall it have an end ? 
I pity those merchants who honor money more than man. 
Their gold is cankered, and their soul is brass, — is rusted 
brass. They must come up before the posterity which 
they affect to scorn. What voice can plead for them 
before their own children ? The eye that mocketh at the 
justice of its son, and scorneth to obey the mercy of its 
daughter, the ravens of posterity shall pick it out, and 
the young eagles eat it up. 

But there is yet another tribunal : " After the death the 
judgment!" When He maketh inquisition for the blood 
of the innocent, what shall the stealers of men reply ? 
Boston merchants, where is your brother, Thomas Simms ? 
Let Cain reply to Christ. 

Come, Massachusetts! take thy historic mantle, wrought 
all over with storied memories of two hundred years, 
adorned with deeds in liberty's defence, and rough with 
broidered radiance from the hands of sainted men ; walk 
backwards, and cover up and hide the naked public shame 



63 



of Boston, drunk with gain, and lewdly lying in the street. 
It will not hide the shame. Who can annul a fact? 
Boston has chronicled her infamy; and on the iron leaf 
of time, — ages shall read it there. 

Then let us swear by the glory of our fathers and the 
infamy of this deed, that we will hate slavery, hate its 
cause, hate its continuance, and will exterminate it from 
the land; come up hither as the years go by, and here 
renew the annual oath, till not a kidnapper is left lurking 
in the land; yes, till from the Joseph that is sold into 
Egypt, there comes forth a man to guide his people to the 
promised land. Out of this " Acorn " a tall oak may grow. 

Old mythologies relate, that, when a deed of sin is done, 
the souls of men who bore a kindred to the deed come 
forth and aid the work. What a company must have 
assisted at this sacrament a year ago ? What a crowd of 
ruffians, from the first New England commissioner to 
the latest dead of Boston murderers ! Robert Kidd might 
have come back from his felon-grave at " Execution Dock," 
to resume his appropriate place, and take command of 
the " Acorn, " and guide her on her pirate-course. Arnold 
might sing again his glad Te Deum, as on that fatal day 
in March. What an assembly there would be, — " shapes 
hot from Tartarus " ! 

But the same mythologies go fabling on, and say that 
at such a time the blameless, holy souls who made the 
virtues blossom while they lived, and are themselves the 
starriest flowers of Heaven now, that they return to bless 
the old familiar spot, and witness every modern deed ; and, 
most of all, that godly ministers, who lived and labored for 
their flocks, return to see the deed they cannot help, and 
aid the good they bless. What a gathering might there 
have been of the just men made perfect! The patriots 
who loved this land, mothers whose holy hearts had blessed 



64 



the babes they bore, pure men of lofty soul who labored for 
mankind, — what a fair company this State could gather 
of the immortal dead ! Of those great ministers of every 
faith, who dearly loved the Lord, what venerable heads I 
see : John Cotton and the other " famous Johns ; " Eliot, 
bearing his Indian bible, which there is not an Indian left 
to read ; Edwards, a mighty name in East and West, even 
yet more marvellous for piety than depth of thought ; the 
Mathers, venerable men ; Chauncy and Mayhew, both 
noble men of wealthy soul ; Belknap, who saw a brother in 
an African ; Buckminster, the fairest, sweetest bud brought 
from another field, too early nipped in this ; Channing and 
Ware, both ministers of Christ, that, loving God, loved 
too their fellow-men ! How must those souls look down 
upon the scene ! Boston delivering up — for lust of gold 
delivering up — a poor, forsaken boy to slavery ; Belknap 
and Channing mourning for the church ! 

I turn me off from the living men, the living courts, the 
living churches, — no, the churches dead ; from the swarm 
of men all bustling in the streets; turn to the sainted dead. 
Dear fathers of the State, ye blessed mothers of New 
England's sons, — O holy saints who laid with prayer the 
deep foundations of New England's church, is then the 
seed of heroes gone ? New England's bosom, is it sterile, 
cold, and dead? "No!" say the fathers, mothers, aU, — 
" New England only sleeps ; even Boston is not dead. 
Appeal from Boston drunk with gold, and briefly mad with 
hate, to sober Boston in her hour to come. Wait but a 
little time ; have patience with her waywardness ; she yet 
shall weep with penitence that bitter day, and rise with 
ancient energy to do just deeds of lasting fame. Even yet 
there's justice in her heart, and Boston mothers shall give 
birth to men ! " 

Tell me, ye blessed, holy souls, angels of New England's 
church ! shall man succeed, and gain his freedom at the last ? 



65 



Answer, ye holy men ; speak by the last great angel of the 
church who went to heaven. Repeat some noble word 
you spoke on earth ! 
Hear their reply : — 

" Oppression shall not always reign : 

There conies a brighter day, 
When Freedom, burst from every chain, 

Shall have triumphant way. 
Then Right shall over Might prevail, 
And Truth, like hero, armed in mail, 
The hosts of tyrant Wrong assail, 

And hold eternal sway. 

" What voice shall bid the progress stay 

Of Truth's victorious car 1 ? — 
What arm arrest the growing day, 

Or quench the solar star 1 
What reckless soul, though stout and strong, 
Shall dare bring back the ancient wrong, — 
Oppression's guilty night prolong, 

And Freedom's morning barT 

" The hour of triumph comes apace, — 

The fated, promised hour, 
When earth upon a ransomed race 

Her bounteous gifts shall shower. 
Ring, Liberty, thy glorious bell! 
Bid high thy sacred banners swell! 
Let trump on trump the triumph tell 

Of Heaven's redeeming power! " 



ORDER OF SERVICES 

AT THE 

FIRST ANNIVERSARY 

OF THE 

KIDNAPPING OF THOMAS SIMMS, 

April 12, 1852. 



I. VOLUNTARY. 
II. READING THE SCRIPTURES, 

BY REV. T. W. HIGGINSON. 

III. PRAYER, 

BY REV. T. TV. HIGGINSON. 

IV. HYMN, 

BY REV. JOHN FIERPON'T. 

Souls of the patriot-dead, 
On Bunker's height who hied ! 

The pile that stands 
On your long-buried bones — 
Those monumental stones — 
Should not suppress the groans 

This day demands. 

For Freedom there ye stood ; 
There gave the earth your blood ; 

There found your graves ; 
That men of every clime, 
Faith, color, tongue, and time, 
Might, through your death sublime, 

Never be slaves. 

Over your bed, so low, 
Heard ye not long ago 

A voice of power 
Proclaim to earth and sea, 
That, where ye sleep, should be 
A home for Liberty, 

Till Time's last hour ? 



67 

Hear ye the chains of slaves 
Now clanking round your graves t 

Hear ye the sound 
Of that same voice, that calls 
From out our Senate-halls, 
" Hunt down those fleeing thralls, 

With horse and hound !" 

That voice your sons hath swayed ! 
'Tis heard and is obeyed ! 

This gloomy day 
Tells you of ermine stained, 
Of Justice' name profaned, 
Of a poor bondman chained 

And borne away ! 

Over Virginia's springs 

Her eagles spread their wings ; 

Her Blue Ridge towers ; 
That voice, once heard with awe, 
Now asks, " Who ever saw 
Up there a higher law 

Than this of ours 1 " 

Must we obey that voice 1 
When God or man's the choice, 

Must we postpone 
Him who from Sinai spoke ? 
Must we wear Slavery's yoke ? 
Bear of her lash the stroke, 

And prop her throne ? 

Leashed with her hounds, must we 
Run down the poor, who flee 

From Slavery's hell 1 
Great God ! when we do this, 
Exclude us from thy bliss ; 
At us let angels hiss 

From heaven that fell ! 



V. DISCOURSE, 

BY REV. THEODOEE PAKKEH. 



68 



VI. HYMN. 

Sons of men who dared be free. 
For Truth and Right who crossed the sea,- 
Hide the trembling poor that flee 
From the land of slaves. 

Men that love your fathers' name, 
Ye who prize your country's fame, — 
Wipe away the public shame 
From your native land. 

Men that know the Mightiest Might, 
Ye who serve the Eternal Right, — 
Change the darkness into light ; 
Let it shine for all. 

Now's the day and now's the hour ; 
See the front of Thraldom lower ; 
See advance the Southern power, — 
Chains and slavery ! 

See ! the kidnappers have come ! 
Southern chains surround your home : 
Will you wait for harsher doom 1 
Will you wear the chain 1 

By yon sea that freely waves, 
By your fathers' honored graves, 
Swear you never will be slaves, 
Nor steal your fellow-man. 

By the Heaven whose breath you draw, 
By the God whose higher law 
Fills the heaven of heavens with awe, — 
Swear for Freedom now. 

Men whose hearts with pity move, 
Men that trust in God above, 
And stoutly follow Christ in love, — 
Save your brother-men. 

VII. BENEDICTION. 



69 



LETTERS. 



[The following letters we received in reply to invitations to attend the 
meeting.] 

Belleville, N. J., April 3, 1852. 

Wendell Phillips, Esq : 

Mvdear Sir, -I have your letter inviting me to address the 
Con/endon to assemble in Tremont Temple on the twelfth of 
this month the anniversary of the day on which Thomas Simms, 
Sot Boston, was sent back to slavery, under the Fugitive 

S1 HannTt be J5£ you on the twelfth ; but I send to the Conven- 
fin ! heartiest congratulations upon the passage of that 
E3LS a'nTimpious climax of diabolical legislation haded 
its passage as the water-doctor hails the first hod of ^<JJJ 
Let the Eternal ulcer break out upon the skin. That is the place 

fo The driving home of that true life-force, the " Higher Law," 
haJat 6 las^ught wonders at the centre ; and that -^ngrene 
so long festering in the dark, has surged to the surface, ana 

Giave ijdw wa j r % now it now, but all too late I 

themselves and each othei. Both know n , 

Let hunted humanity take fresh heart.— Ihere s a good 

coming." 

I am all heartiness, 

Theodore D. Weld. 



70 

White Hall, P.O., Madison Co., Ky. 
April 5th, 1852. 

Dear Sib, — Your letter of the twenty-fourth ultimo, inviting 
me, on the part of the Vigilance Committee of Boston, to be 
present and address the Convention, who will " commemorate, 
with appropriate services, in Tremont Temple," the twelfth day 
of April, — that on which Thomas Simms was sent back into 
slavery, under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, — was to-day 
received, and I hasten to reply. I receive this invitation, which 
circumstances will not allow me to accept, as a very distinguished 
honor, of which I am proud to make public avowal ; and with 
feelings of gratification, because it will allow me, without the 
imputation of egotism, to enter my protest, as an American 
citizen and a man, against that most atrocious of all human laws ! 
When I had the honor to make the canvass last summer, upon 
the sole basis of the constitutional overthrow of slavery in Ken- 
tucky, I separated from some of my ablest and longest-tried 
personal friends, upon the issue of making this law a part of the 
basis of the movement ; it being generally conceded that my vote 
for Governor would be run up to twenty thousand without oppo- 
sition to the law, whilst I would not get as many hundreds by 
the opposite course. 1 cut the matter short by saying, that, much 
as I hated slavery, I hated that law more ! And now, after all 
the argument which time-serving statesmen and canting clergy- 
men and a mercenary press have been able to advance, and the 
experience of near two years' action of strife and bloodshed and 
" constructive treason," I am of the same opinion. 

We inherited slavery — we made that law ! The Constitution 
of the United States, with sighs and tears, took slavery into its 
embrace, — believing that our independence could only thus be 
secured. But the Fugitive Slave Law was begotten in lust of 
power, and defied all shame and self-respect ! We admire our 
fathers of : 76, whilst we hate the deed ! Notwithstanding all my 
Christian charity, when I look upon the Fugitive Slave Law, I 
cannot but avow that I hate the deed and the perpetrators ! I 
hate them, because they confound all moral distinctions, — calling 
evil good, and good evil ; because they did an atrocity of such 
magnitude upon the basest and most selfish motives ; but, above 
all, I hate them because of their smooth-faced, hypocritical cant ! 
This bill was passed under the pretence of preserving inviolate 
the Constitution, and, as a consequence, the Union of these States. 
Now, Mr. Mason, of the Virginia school of strict constructionists, 
its author, knows, — and Daniel Webster, the " expounder of the 
Constitution," and the "Union Safety Committee" know, — and 
every man of common sense knows, that the power of delivering 
up " fugitives from service " is granted to the States as sovereigns 
only ; and that Congress has no power whatever, not the slightest, 
to pass any such law. This is not the place for argument, but 
simple statement of an opinion. If this Union shall ever be 



71 



hated, that law will cause it to be hated. If this Union shall 
ever be dissolved, that law will be its death-blow and cause of 
dissolution. So that, were I an abolitionist of the disunion 
school, I should not, on the twelfth, wear sackcloth and ashes, 
but greatly rejoice that good was being evolved out of evil, in 
• destroying for ever that hypocritical cant of politicians and priests, 
who can pray for all the atrocities of slavery, on account of the 
glorious blessings of freedom which the Constitution promises to 
the down-trodden nations, — when now they are found in the 
patent scoundrelism of trampling that Constitution under foot, 
in base submission to the slave-tyrants of this nation ! 

But as I am really a Union-man, and for submission physically 
to the laws, I regret the passage of that law for the Union's 
sake ; and whilst, on the one hand, as I avowed to Kentucky, all 
earth could not make me assist in the execution of that mis- 
nomer, so, on the other hand, I cannot give my sanction to a 
violent resistance of laws, while on the statute-book, and not yet 
by the proper courts declared null and unconstitutional. 

It adds to my regret at not being present on the twelfth, that I 
shall miss the occasion of hearing the true Christian and man, 
Theodore Parker ; and that I shall be unable to meet per- 
sonally that distinguished band of men and women who consti- 
tute the American abolition party, — whose motives I have, on 
all proper occasions, at great personal sacrifice, vindicated. To 
you comes no reward of earth ; not in the social circle — not of 
gold — not the pleasures of sensualism, however much purified 
in the fine and plastic arts, in music and in poetry — not the 
power of place, where ambition grows immortal in achievement, 
caring not whether of good or evil — not of fame, to live in 
" storied urn or animated bust" — but struggling ever for the 
true and the merciful — giving utterance, at all hazards, to 
the voiceless woe of the millions, who else have no advocate. If 
there be on earth any receptacle of that divine spirit which God 
through man to man reveals, are you not the true priests 1 You 
are the avengers ! and though Webster cry peace, and though 
faithless ministers cry peace, and though the press cry peace, — 
though all the earth cry peace, — and even though the " Union 
Safety Committee" cry peace, there shall be no peace till justice 
be no longer " compromised ! " To this liberty-canting people, 
of all nations the most oppressive, that God " whose arm is not 
shortened," and whose ears are never closed to the poor and 
feeble who call for help, shall, through many brave spirits, North 
and South, ever thunder into the ears of tyrants — " March, 
march, MARCH!" — No more peace for ever, until the iron 
hand be loosed, and all men shall be FREE ! 

I have the honor to be your obedient servant, 

C. M. Clay. 
Wendell Phillips, Esq., 

Chairman of Sub-Committee, &c, Boston. 



72 



Jefferson, 0., April 3, 1850. 



My Deak Sir, — Were it convenient, I would gladly meet 
with, the friends of freedom in Boston, to commemorate the re- 
enslavement of Simms. The day should be observed as one of 
deep humility before God and mankind. On that occasion, the 
sons of free, enlightened, and Christian Massachusetts, descend- 
ants of the Pilgrim Fathers, bowed submissively to the behests 
of a tyranny more cruel than Austrian despotism ; yielded up 
their dignity and self-respect ; became the allies of slave-catchers, 
the associates and companions of bloodhounds. At the bidding 
of slaveholders and serviles, they seized the image of God, bound 
their fellow-man with chains, and consigned him to torture and 
premature death under the lash of a piratical overseer. God's 
law and man's rights were trampled upon ; the self-respect, the 
constitutional privileges of the free States, were ignominiously 
surrendered. A people who resisted a paltry tax upon tea, at 
the cannon's mouth, basely submitted to an imposition tenfold 
greater, in favor of brutalizing their fellow-men. Soil which had 
been moistened with the blood of American patriots, was polluted 
by the footsteps of slave-catchers and their allies. 

But the heart sickens at the review of scenes so disgraceful to 
the character of our nation. A more encouraging spectacle was 
presented at Christiana. There man appears conscious of the 
dignity of his own character. Standing upon the free soil of 
Pennsylvania, he refused to surrender the freedom with which 
God had endowed him. Pressed by the barbarous slave-catcher, 
he nobly vindicated his claims to humanity by slaying his assail- 
ant, although they were sons of the same parent. When I first 
learned that the piratical Gorsuch had fallen by the hand of his 
brother, whom he claimed as a " chattel," I involuntarily exclaim- 
ed, " Sic semper tyrannis ! " The day is not far distant when 
the name of " Gorsuch the fugitive " shall be registered among 
the heroes of this age. He nobly defended the Constitution, 
which guarantees to the people of the North entire exemption 
from the crime of slavery. To him, in coming time, shall be 
awarded the gratitude of our people ; while infamy of the deepest 
dye shall gather around the memory of him who, of all others, 
gave the most efficient support to the law which consigned Simms 
to slavery, and " Gorsuch the pirate " to an untimely grave. 

Yours for humanity, 

J. R. Giddings. 
Wendell Phillips, 

Chairman of Vigilance Committee, Boston. 



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